The Day Before The Day The World Got Nuclearized
by theflummox
Summary: A long and haphazard take on the events occurring at Big MT on October 22nd, 2077 leading up to the nuclear strike on Oct 23rd 2077.
1. Chapter 1

So they all had to get used to the pseudonyms.

These replacement titles came in the form of little name-tags dispensed to their workstations via the Compresso-courier Delivery Tube. Capsules popped into their offices with a little "*ding* and a howdy. Inside they found aluminum alloy plates with a SnazzCo Quantum Levitation Pin on the back that allowed them to stick the thing to the front of their labcoat without it flopping down or sliding off. In fact, the SnazzCorp Quantium Levitation Pin allowed them to sport their new names in such a magnificently scientific manner that their developer, SnazzCorp, had advertised that it would guarantee a 27% increase in grant money solely through impressing the tie clips off of potential Big MT investors. Wealthy industrialists, military brass and big-buzz journalists; how their eyes would glaze over in wonder just seeing the names of the top researchers of Big MT float suspended in the air before their labcoats! They would indeed soon be passing their fingers between the chrome backing and the hypercooled "Human Introductions Expediency Device" and gape in awe at the wonders of quantum locking. No crude bobby pin or magnet held these researchers' names aloft, oh no. It was a cantrip of science. Most importantly, it was a visually impressive one.

After all, with the world balancing like grandmother's precious teakettle on the lip of the politically-charged coffee table of the world over the unswept hardwood floors of war, visually impressive discoveries were what America desperately wanted. It was what Big MT used to distinguish itself from RobCo's high-publicity parade of fully-voiced automatons. If it spun, whirred, exploded, violently transmogrified, produced a stream of sparkles or sparks, shot colourful beams or bolts or produced really anything more or less spherical and glowing then it was considered worth funding. If it buzzed, beeped, rattled with rhythm, made zapping sounds, spoke in a loud voice declaring its intentions or warned its environs of just how dangerous it was in a voice both proud and menacing then the newspapers would feature it on at least page two or three. If it blew things up, tore things down, blasted things apart and then blasted them back together again, and had indicators that counted the number of blowings up and tearings down and showed in multicoloured LED display at what efficiency it was radioglowifying organic matter before repurposing it into a nutritious protien paste, the president wanted it at half the size with a brief instruction manual and in the hands of every red-blooded American soldier. Visually impressive was the bread and butter of Big MT and thus, as indicated by the note included with each Quantum Levitation Pin, the head research team's new name tags were going to be the floaty kind.

And as mentioned before these floating nametags bore the new pseudonyms of the head research team. They were a security measure. The sanctity of the interior of Big MT had always been top-priority. However, as any computer scientist could tell you, no system is one-hundred-percent secure. Accidents were happening. As of October 20th 2077 there had been no fewer than fifteen uninentionally fatal accidents within the shell of Big MT over the span of two months. All data indicated a probability of 384% that Chinese spies were responsible for every single one of them. Big MT had imposed a series of security measures to ensure the safety of its most important staff. One of these was to blank the records of every single staff member. In place of their real names they were given other names. Scientific names. Utterly respectably impressive names. Names that would not only confuse any Chinese spy by defying their stiff and Confucianist notions of naming but also impress the shareholder review by sounding many times more scientific than something like "Robert House."

In the womb of the Central Dome there was an impressive room known as the Think Tank. Down a hallway, fourth automatic door on the left, was a much smaller and rectangular known as the Think Tank Annex. off to the side of the Think Tank Annex, through a hinged door with a twist handle, was the Think Tank Annex Break Room. Inside, seated around a deluxe H&H Heracleum-alloy Folding Picnic Table, the six head researchers loomed over Bit MT's success with their single most important project of the century: obtaining verifiable plundered copies of Vault-Tec's single most important project of the century.

"Remarkable. Utterly remarkable. So remarkable I can't even remark upon it. It's just unspeakably and remarkably . . . _them_."

"I'll be honest. I'm a bit jealous."

"Back up, BACK UP. It's impossible for us all to leer and gossip at the diagrams when the two of you are hogging all of the gossip and leering."

"Everybody, take five folders. No more."

"But there's twenty-nine folders and five of us!"

"Doctor Merriw- eh, I mean, ONE OF US is absent. Put his folders in front of his chair. That chair, over there, with the monogrammed stitching ripped out."

"Is everyone wearing their nametag?"

"Of course we are. Security regulations."

"I'm not! I'm not wearing mine. Can't trust Quantum Locking that close to my chest without an insulated undershirt. What if I stand too close to the microwave? I don't want to wind up defrosting my nipples with a toaster coil in the Sink while you pick apart this juicy contraband information."

"We were explicitly forbidden from not wearing our nametags. By breaking the rules the only thing you're pinning to your chest right now is a red star. You only get four folders. And fetch your nametag or we won't be calling you by any name but _Mao Zee Dong_."

When he returned, the rest of them were adjusting their glasses leaning across the table to examine each others' tags.

"Doctor . . . Klein then, is it?"

"Yes. Apparently. Fortunately. Very scientific, isn't it? I believe, if a cursory glance around doesn't decieve me, that my name is de-facto the most scientific. Not bragging of course. It would only be natural. I've always been good with bottles, in any case."

"We haven't seen them all yet."

"Dala. Doctor Dala."

"Doctor Eight."

"Doctor Borous."

"My name is still coming up trumps. Why am I not surprised," Klein muttered, "And what's this? Doctor . . . 0."

Doctor 0 adjusted his tag.

"That's, ah, Zero. Doctor Zero."

"Nonsense. That is CLEARLY an 0."

"Nope. Zero. I'm . . . Doctor Zero. It's oblong. Oval-shaped. That's a Zero."

"Did you get a letter with your tag?" asked Dala.

"Well, yes, didn't you?"

"And what did it say? Is it 0 or Zero?"

Doctor 0 or Zero or whatever he was called rubbed his chin, "Well, yeah. Of course I did. Didn't you? Was I the only one who got a letter? Don't tell me I was the only one with a special note scolding me to wear the damn thing, I-I-I mean it's not like this is the bathroom sink here with that interoffice "waste-not water" campaign. That one got plopped right square in my lap just because ONE night I left the faucet on with a drip. That's not pattern forgetfulness. That's entropy at work. I can prove it. I wrote up a paper to prove it. I can prove, with mathematical precision, that entropy was responsible for making me look bad. Therefore, entropy is the one who looks bad. Entropy leaves all sorts of things dripping in the night that shouldn't drip. I should really issue that report once I find the right typeset and clip-art for the header, fonts, et-cetera. But I digress: my name is definitely Doctor Zero. It is a zero, not an O. Do I have to schedule you all in for a class on the basic differential geometrics of the circular and pseudocircular?"

"I still say it's an O," said Klein, "Borous, take a closer look at it. You're good with round-ish things."

Borous leaned his body across the entire table squinting until his face was a forearm's length away from the suspended nametag,

"If that's a zero . . . then where is the conspicuous SLASH that distingishes the letter from the number?"

Schroedinger's Name plucked the tag out of the quantum lock and put it down on the table. The five of them quickly rushed to loom over it. Doctor 8 activated the blue light on his datapad to illuminate it.

"THAT Is a letter," Borous declared, "All who declare this to be a letter, let your hand be ELEVATED."

Everyone but the researcher in question did so and his name was decided. through the acutely un-scientific process of democracy, to be O. As they took their seats he took out a small tube and began attempting to laser etch a slash through the roundish thing. All that he managed to do was produce sparks. The tag was Saturnite alloy. A Wattz 2000 Laz-o-sketch wouldn't cut it. So he turned to the pilfered Vault-Tec printouts the rest were mugging over.

"Ha! Ha!" Klein burst out, "And Vault-Tec consider themselves innovaters. Laughable. Utterly derisively laughable. I haven't felt so much like laughing with verifiably mirthful humour since those poorly sealed barrels of concentrated endorphins leaked into the cistern plumbing."

"It's, well . . ." Doctor 8 adjusted his reading glasses, "Not to be _that guy_ but, ah, these vault experiments. They're very comprehensive."

"Bah! Comprehensive. Com-pre-hensive. What do we do here that isn't comprehensive? The robo-scorpion project alone required every single one of the research stations tasked to full to complete. We even had to consult that beta AI in X-3. If consulting a Beta on how to run something through an Alpha isn't 'being comprehensive' I'm clearly in the wrong line of work. I should be teaching grammar school chemistry. In _England_. According to Meri- to, well, to THAT missing researcher . . . what is his name now?"

"No idea. Hasn't shown up yet."

"Where is he?"

"Showing around some guest. No clue who. Must not be important if one of you still hasn't claimed to have been in the same class as he was."

"Fascinating," Dala said, "Absolutely fascinting. Now, how do you think that would turn out: enclosed vault population of one-thousand with nine-hundred and ninety nine women and one man."

"Where are you getting this?"

"Vault 69."

"How appropriate."

"The same, but in reverse here at vault 68," Doctor Zero added, "But with one woman and the same number of men."

Dala cleaned her glasses, "Sounds like . . . exhausting research."

"Psychology," Klein growled, "Absolute crackpottery. The only thing psychology ever did for us was taking psychologists out of the field of real sciences. If I wanted my dreams analyzed I'd consult the Hypnagogic Sigmundian Spectrometer. At least I can fit that in my closet without it complaining about the implicatons of me storing it there."

"THAT thing? It told me that my dream, you know, the . . . the high-school one?" Borus paused to chew on his words, "It told me that my dream was, and I quote, 'Only 5% unrefined imagination.' It actually said that! To ME!"

Doctor 8 looked up from his paper to ask, "Then what would the remainder be?"

"_Vintage-year repression._"

They all sucked air in through their teeth.

"And to think! We nearly had that repressionectomy algorithm for the auto-doc you were working on, Dala. why was that shelved, again?"

"Not feasable. Too dangerous."

"Bah. Plenty of things are dangerous. Breathing is dangerous. There's at least seventy-thousand things that could kill you if you breathed them in. That holotape, is it on a high shelf? Could I reach it without having to resort to using a stepladder or chair of some sort?"

"I've lost the holotape. For the best really. Someone could have accidentally excised their own _Raison d'être._"

"And here I was assuming that you were a dedicated minerologist."

"I'm still accruing doctorates."

Doctor Klein scoffed, "VAULT Puppets? I mean, _really_ now. One man. A vault. Puppets. It's like watching the those four-fingered hand-drawn livestock on saturday morning Tee-Vee prance about in lab coats." He tossed the folder across the table where it skidded into Doctor O's lap trailing sheafs of paper.

"Hardly an experiment," O said, "I mean, what are they hoping to PROVE with this thing? This whole experiment?"

"That they have no legitimacy and never have? It's nonsense. Really quite rubbish, if you ask me," Klein said, "Where's the SCIENCE in gathering together samplings of the American populace and putting them through stress-tests in sealed vaults in order to log the behavioural changes in each sample group and matched against a series of control groups, also sealed into their own vaults, under the duress of what is likely going to be the greatest worldwide conflict in known history?"

"None whatosever."

"Absolutely."

"One-hundred percent ridiculousness."

"Not a shred of ingenuity."

"Pathetic."

There was a silence.

"Oh to hell with it," Doctor O spat out throwing his hands to the sky, "It's brilliant. They're brilliant. I've never even dreamed of having this kind of opportunity."

"Government licensed!"

"Fully-funded!"

"And the VARIETY!" Borous said, "The sheer scale of it! One-hundred and twenty-two test villages! Little Yangze looks like a waiting line at an outhose compared to this. Oh hell, tear my heart out and replace it with a . . . a fish tank pump why don't they."

"Am I hearing what I think I'm hearing?" Klein exploded, "MY research team blubbering like homo sapien larvae at the sight of some human storage cabinet manufacturing company? What about our projects, you dunces?"

"No they've really outdone us Klein," sighed 8, "This is the biggest thing I've seen a private contractor ever manage to pull off. Ever. Bigger than Merriweather's X-42. Bigger even than that mutagenic goo thing West Tek has going on at Mariposa. We're . . . well, suffice to say this makes us look pretty stick-in-the-mud."

"Nonsense. Absolute moron's sense. We're practically swimming in contracts! Aren't we? Dala, what about that . . . that thing you were working on? The thing you were messing with yesterday?"

She looked at him in confusion. Klein sighed.

"That anatomically correct metal man you've got crowding the storage room of Y-2?"

"My Saturnite Adonis?" Dala asked, "Oh, that's a work in progress. Hardly have the nose right yet. And that wasn't a, erm, contracted project. Personal interest. I add a little this or that on breaks. He overheats easily under a laser beam."

"Is he functional yet?"

"Functional? Well, no, I haven't even gotten to his belly-button yet. He'll never be, well, TRULY functional. Could be dangerous."

"No plans to make him articulate?"

"I don't think it would . . . impress much . . . on Shareholder's Day. We could put him out front of the Dome, I suppose. If we made him some pants. Might draw in tourists, loathsome as the thought is."

"TOURISTS," bellowed Klein hammring his fists down on the table, "The last thing we need is to resort to _tourism_. We are building the _future_ here. At least one of us has to have a meaningful contract at the moment. Doctor O? Pfah, don't even speak. The last thing I saw on your slate was reverse-engineering spare RobCo tech into prosthetic limbs for . . . for wounded children was it?"

"Hey, it worked," said O adding a pinch of sugarless mentat to his coffee, "Betsy loved her new Securotron arm. Couldn't play the violin anymore, of course, but she's helping her dad hunt wild geese on the farm with 400% improved efficiency."

"Doctor 8? What about that voice-o change-o-tronic . . . thing you were doing. Voiceulator? Voiceaholic parambula . . . something? Don't blame me. As head of logistical operations I can't possibly be expected to keep track of all of your failures."

"Had to be repurposed. Everyone's voice came out sounding like Dean Domino, no matter what I did to tweak the cloud personality matrices. Sold great for Christmas though. I'll have you know that 8% of our 2070 budget came from 'Dean Machine' holiday sales. Statistics showed them to be very popular with husbands who had been married for four years or more."

"So we're a TOY company now? Is that it? Should Dala start producing Saturnite ventriloquism dunces? Why don't I just defenestrate myself now and be done with it?"

The door swung open.

"Good afternoon, colleagues! I, Doctor Mobius, have returned from lunch!"

Their heavily-bearded associate entered the room with a booming voice, a smile and an unknown scientist in a beige labcoat.

"Doctor . . . what?" Klein adjusted his glasses and squinted at the suspended name tag, "Did you spike your mentats, Merriweather?"

He was immediately shushed as the two newcomers took seats. The unknown scientist took his place beside Mobius, produced a small notepad and immediately began to sketch something on it.

"Silence! Do NOT utter that name out loud, nor any name like it, nor any other name formerly known to this think tank as associated with any member OF this think tank! Security is of grave importance at the moment; the details of which I'll inform you of as soon as I've had a peek at these juicy Vault-Tec reports. Yum. Nothing tastier than insider information."

After skimming the reports he declared them to be "A hideous display of brilliance."

"Vault-Tec," Moebius mused, "Always rejecting the ever-important glow-y aesthetics of science in lieu of groups, groups, groups. I cannot fathom what they even do with all of their group test results. Sometimes I think they might just stuff them into a vault to see how the documents will handle being locked away in there. If the data were to leap off of the pages and start battling for supremacy over ink and pens then they'd throw an office party. As far as I can tell Vault-Tec has never once done anything with any of the data they've ever accumulated over the years about vaults and human psychology except to better design vaults for doing human psychological testing."

"Psychology," repeated Klein, "Mobius, you must agree with me or you'd be wrong: there is nothing in this world more deplorable than a psychologist. Prove otherwise. You can't."

"I couldn't disagree with you more, Klein. Without psychology we wouldn't understand why we despise psychologists so much, and if we didn't understand why we hated psychologists so much we wouldn't be able to justify our hate towards anything at all. And if we couldn't justify our hate towards anything at all then we couldn't well justify the creation of the Hateological Psycho-stim Injection Vector and our soldiers on the front-lines would be handing daisies to the reds in hopes of killing them with kindness."

"Oh don't get me started," Doctor 8 butted in, "The infamous X-22 project, 'Codename: Wifflebeam?' Please."

"Weaponizing kindness: bottomless money pit," nodded O.

"Regardless," continued Klein, "They're, at best, a tangental resource. For laughter, that is! Endocrinology; by contrast, a priceless field! Without endochronological studies we'd all still have 'nominally-functioning' medulla and just think of where we'd be then. Morally culpable, that's where! _Feeling_ things," Klein shuddered, "About our test subjects, even!"

"Speaking of," Dala added, "I'm concerned about my own medullar tweaking. I've been feeling guilty lately. About some things."

"Oh really? We'll have see to that at once," Mobius said as he stroked his beard.

"Nothing important, I hope?" asked Klein with an eyebrow raised.

"No. Not really. Just . . . well. No. Nothing that important."

"Guilt?" said O, "Oh, shoo. It's probably something like 'Oh dear oh my, I'm Doctor Dala, important head researcher at the biggest technological institute in the greatest country in the world. I shouldn't be sleeping in like this after a hard night of saving the planet from the dark specter of the mundane. My bed is just soooooo comfortable.' Right?"

"Not exactly."

"It's not about Little Yangze, is it?" 8 asked, "Because THAT is something we have discussed before in depth. We've plunged the depths of that discussion before and there's nothing down there in the anti-humanist gloom but amazing discovery."

"Really Dala, with the present condition of your brain there's no reason to feel guilty unless the auto-doc slipped up somehow. Drive might need defragmenting."

"Could be my chem use. I don't know. Lets change the subject."

"What caused this so-called 'guilt' in the first place? You walk by Little Yanzte there every day on the way to the Saturnite Alloy Research Facility and I've never once heard you complain about those alleged 'humans' we've wrangled out of the legions of the red menace."

"Well, I think it was a hallucination that caused it. I saw one of them. In the dome. Scavenging Cram from the break room like a . . . a lost animal."

The entire table gasped.

"IMPOSSIBLE," Borous roared, "Absolutely not-thinkable. The collars! Even I don't know how to remove their collars. I don't think there's a living person in the facility who does. We even melted all of those interns to make sure of it. There is nothing that could allow a Yangze subject out of their filthy little nest without all of their sedition-filled brains being smeared halfway across the crater."

"Like I said: it may have been a hallucination."

"And yet, if it wasn't!" bellowed Mobius loud enough to interrupt the unknown scientist from his sketching, "What if he WAS loose in the facility! This brings me to the root topic of discussion of this meeting: our precious sciences are at a terrible risk. The war is escalating and we have a reponsibility to end it with a victory for all that is hypothetically in the favour of Democracy. If not, we're all going to wind up being scientists for the reds. You don't want to know what THEY do to their scientists."

"What DO they do to them?"

Doctor Mobius' voice sank low,

"Limited budget. 25% taxation on income. And worst of all: they have to share housing and facilities with . . . manual laborers."

Everyone leaned back steeping in shocked silence.

"Like . . . who, ditch diggers?

Mobius nodded.

"Vacuum-tube technicians?"

He nodded again.

"PLUMBERS?"

The unknown stopped sketching again, stared woefully at the ceiling, shivered, and then continued.

Klein wiped sweat from his brow, "I see. I see. Well, it's not like we didn't all didn't assume that. It's just a shock to hear spoken out loud. So, Merriwea- MOBIUS. Mobius. What does THIs have to do with US? We don't live with laborers. We don't even KNOW any laborers."

"Well I'm getting to that, Klein. You've all read the recent accident reports-"

"Accidents? You're worried about some accidents? What else is new here?" Doctor O chimed in, "Ding-dong, is Doctor Mobius home? We live on accidents. Why, just the other day Doctor Klein told me to close my eyes and slam my hand against some console he'd been working on in order to replicate a proper input fumble."

"I couldn't well replicate it _myself_ or it wouldn't be a fumble."

Mobius frowned, "If any of you had actually READ my reports, which I'm sure only 8 may have skimmed, you'd know that these were accidental accidents. Not the normal kind. We account for the normal kind. My first college thesis was on productively factoring the likelihood of violently explosive mishap into a successful project. Won me an award. I shook the president's hand and everything, or at least one of his more talented look-alikes. The Sink's Ident-o-matic SmartEye said that there was a 97.8% likelihood that it was the real Dick Richardson."

"Oh why don't you just marry that photograph," grumbled Klein.

"Digression aside, these accidents are truly accidental and worrysome _in extremis_. The latest one is the blaringly loud icing on our cake of alarm: do you all remember the 3D Surround Sound Propagandoplex?"

A pause.

"Yes?"

"No."

"Vaguely."

"I provided something for that project," Dala said, "I think it was the seat frames for the theatre."

"You ALL built it!" shouted Mobius, "It was part of the experiments for the Sierra Madre contract! Z-38! The hologram project!"

"Oh," said O, "Well, if you'd just said 'The holo-thingy' I would have recognized it immediately. Yes, yes, quite a remarkable success. Wait a moment, did you say Z-38? That didn't explode. Y-0 did. Klein saw to that."

Klein's cheeks darkened a shade of red and he stopped breathing.

"What? You did!"

"I did NOT," Klein jabbed his finger at Mobius, "I came up with the idea! HE handed me the diagrams! HE was the one who drew them up! He put them in _metric_! WHY would you draft schematics for an isotope converter in _metric_? Were you educated in BELGIUM, MONSIEUR MERRIWEATHÈUR?"

"That name AGAIN!" Mobius stood up in his chair knocking it backwards, "Do NOT call me by that name! I am MOBIUS. I have ALWAYS been Doctor Mobius as far as you are concerned, from the beginning of recorded history to the heat death of the universe! You are putting all of our lives in the hands of THE ENEMY. AS WE SPEAK."

The table shut up a bit as Mobius put his chair back on its feet and resumed his composure.

"Abhorrent misbehaviour on your part. Ignorant and selfish," he growled, "And I didn't do it on purpose. There was a sorting code error and I hadn't taken my daily dose that day. Instead I got children's Choco-Drops for mentats. I thought they were a new flavour. I repeat again: GENTLEMEN . . . and DALA! We are in DANGER! The enemy is not at our doorstep: he has crawled under the house, drilled in through the crawlspace and is putting drops of commie poison in our mouthwash!"

"Explain," said 8.

"In due course. Now, yes it's true: the 3D Surround Sound Propagandoplex was NOT housed at Z-38 where we developed the rest of the hologram technology for that glorified bellhop Sinclair. There wasn't enough room in it for even a half-size movie theater. It was housed at Y-0 in the basement. I can even show you the blueprints, yes, IN IMPERIAL UNITS," he shot a glance at Klein, "Proving that it was housed there. Having been constructed in the basement with Saturnite soundproofing it was partially shielded from the blast and most of its important subsystems were salvageable. They were hauled out relatively intact. Doctor O, I believe you were tasked with repairing the majority of them."

"Oh? Was I? Were those the things you left in my office? I had to get the construction crew to haul them out onto the grass because I had no room to work on them. I think, uh, that's still on my to-do list. Organizing that."

"Sloppy sloppy," Mobius frowned again, "Several of the core components have gone missing. Most notably the reverse-engineered Mesmetron, now dubbed the 'Cinematrix Lens," the Audiographical Thoughtsculpter and the Subliminal Suggestion Box. All missing, all unaccounted for. Probably due to O and his inability to organize, well, anything."

"You should have left them in my lab! You know, where I _work_?"

"Your lab is the crater's junkyard. I couldn't even find the door to open it and check inside for available space."

"Okay! Okay! So I screeeewed up! Big honking deal! At least I didn't blow up an entire lab by having a morning case of Europeanitis!"

Everyone took five for coffee refills before returning to the discussion.

"So Moebius, these parts are gone: why the panic? I misplace things all of the time. We don't even know where the initial prototype of the Y-17 is anymore. For all we know it's gambling away some stolen 0.01% of our budget in Las Vegas and finding out it can't get drunk because it's filled with . . . dead guy."

"Yes, of course, things go missing. Pencils. Pencil sharpeners. Wallets. Prototypes. Military-grade bioanathama gel. The list goes on. However, these Propagandoplex parts are _conspicuously_ absent. Their immediate use, unlike wallets or skin-melting goo, is not commonly known to anyone but those who might have the means to abuse them. They're not even labeled. Nor do they come with an instruction manual in five, maybe six languages."

"Yeah, hence my confusion," added O, "I thought they were all refrigeration units or elaborate paperweights or something. So, I put them outside with all of our other fancy paperweights. Newton knows we've got a lot of those."

"Yes, well, the capacity to make malicious use of their functions I would rate 'terminally high.' On a rating scale from zero to three these things are an irrational number of some sort. Possibly _e_."

Dala looked skeptical, "Why so dangerous? What thread are they as paperweights? Is the enemy trying to make off withour superior-grade printing paper? So smooth, you know. Quality stationery."

Mobius sighed, "Well, on their own they essentially ARE big paperweights. In the context of the 3D Surround Sound Propagandoplex they were crucial to its core functions. The Cinematrix Lens focused the holotech light waves into acute hypnotic patterns that transformed the silver screen into a thought-radiation refractoplane for dynamic suggestion transference. The Audiographical Thoughtsculpter, 8's work, scrubbed sound waves to emulate the exact pitch and frequency of both a scolding mother and a coercive father speaking at exactly the same time while offering the audience the aural impression of a gigantic three-flavour ice-cream sundae reward. WITH CHERRY. And, as the name implies, The Subliminal Suggestion Box processed whatever message we wanted to send from a modifiable punch-card into data that could be dissimenated by the other two devices. A genius work of thought control technology in the form of an entertaining three-dimensional film. Brings a tear to my eye."

Borous cringed, "And this so-called _Propagandoplex_ exploded? I hope we at least sold a license or two before the fateful, ah, kablooie."

Mobius shook his head sadly, "Not one. Although we were planning to build a replacement before the parts went missing, as it was a beautiful piece of work that Hollywood would not have been able to ignore. Now, as I said, on their own these components are useless. They're not even interesting to look at. No centrifuges, pressure gauges, knobs, buttons, meters, or readouts. Not even an on/off light. But it has come to my attention that two other very important pieces of technology have been misplaced as well: a Sierra Madre Vending Machine and the Mk29 Universal Munitions Distributer."

Doctor Borous tightened his brow, "Isn't that a . . . gun?"

"Yes."

"That fires . . . little chunks of metal?"

"Elongated three-dimensional dome/cone-shaped prisms of metal, to be precise."

"Let me get this straight," Klein leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head, "You're concerned that we're going to be introduced to high velocity pieces of dense mineral, as in, stuck in our bodies. Like common footsoldiers! I'M concerned you're going senile. The pacification field prevents anyone from so much as _thinking_ about firing a, how do you say it, 'gun' in the Dome. We're safe as kittens. Kittens with opposable thumbs."

"I must admit Mobius, it's absurd to be worried about this. If the violent distribution of ammunition were a threat to us we'd all be living in vaults like these _plebians_," Borous gestured at the Vault-Tec documents on the table.

"If I may be allowed to continue? Forceful lead poisoning trauma isn't what's at stake here. As I said: the mind-control technologies are the key. They could easily be used to modify the Mk29 UMD into something completely different, something I've dubbed the 'MK29 Unmidigated Mind Deconfrabulator.' They could turn the Mk29 UMD into the impossibly more threatening Mk29 UMD! With such a device they could rewrite, for their own socialist purposes, the brains of any non-lobotomized sentient residing in Big MT!"

There was a moment of silence to consider this.

"I, for one, just plain don't see the reason behind this whole Mk29 business," Doctor Borous said, "We've got Mesmetrons just lying around in X-8. I tripped over one the other day while I was taking Gabe to the splicing chamber. Why doesn't this communist swineherder just use one of those to scramble our impossibly brilliant minds?"

The smile of a man possessed by the understanding of something brilliant and terrible stole underneath Mobius' beard,

"Because, gentlemen . . . and Dala, the Mesmetrons we possess are the commerical-use model, not the unlicensed promotional model. They're pieces of ill-designed Washington DC-region technotwaddle. In order to use one of ours you're forced to read, and confirm understanding of via multiple-choice test, a licensing agreement projected onto its Mesmoscreen. Part of that agreement is the knowledge that using the Mesmetron on any living creature brings with it, and I quote, 'The chance of irreversable frenzy, irreperable damage to the cerebral cortex, and explosive cranial distruption.' In other words using it requires the pre-disposed knowledge that it is a violent and dangerous weapon. Hence, it is impossible to use under the effect of the pacification field."

"So we're doubly-safe!" shouted Klein, "Either they're using a gun on us or they're using a gun on us!"

"Far from it! You understand nothing! You understand negative anything about the gravity of this crisis! A Mk29 UMD repurposed into an insidious experimental Mk29 UMD removes all violent intent from the Mk29 UMD! The Mk29 UMD is completely safe to anyone who might use it against another due to the gentle nature of the brain altering components it contains! Those components were _designed_ to be softly suggestive! Its use would no more be suppressed by the pacification field as would a salesman coming in here and trying to convince you to buy a 2nd hand Protectron!"

Doctor O sat up straight in his chair and screamed, "You're telling me the pacification field HASN'T been calibrated against RobCo spokespersons? They could just, just _dance_ in here and tell us all why House's robo-rejects are 'The safest name in mobile home appliance?' Am I the ONLY SANE MAN IN THIS ENTIRE CRATER?"

"Relax," assured 8, "It's taken care of. We've got their personality and appearance profiles logged into the turret grid. First entry. Top priority. Shoot on sight. Shoot to kill."

Doctor O let loose a sigh of relief.

"For once," he said collapsing into his chair, "I can finally say I am proud to be part of Big MT."

Everyone broke for more coffee and more mentats. By this point none of them could sit still in their chairs. O kept having visuals of Robert House's mustache flittering around the room which he would swat at occasionally with a rolled up report on a certain "Vault 13." Borous' voice was steadily rising to a rolling boom when he spoke and showing no signs of stopping. Klein had out a mirror and a pair of manucurist's scissors trying to make his facial hair perfectly symmetrical.

"As I said, gentlemen and Dala: the matter at hand is severe. Right now any one of us could be under the command of the enemy. The persuasions fired from the Mk29 UMD sound like a distant out-of-tune radio broadcast to the victim and they would plant themselves so reasonably into their mind that they would seem like part of the victim's daily routine. They wouldn't even notice that they were doing something seditious and traitorous. All of our various projects are at risk. Just imagine, Dala, your glorious Saturnite Adonis on display . . . in a gift shop! At 1/29th scale! In the Forbidden City! Sold for peanuts!"

Dala clapped a hand over her trembling mouth and whispered, "Never. They could never replicate his form properly."

"He would be sold as a cheap trinket to Pei-jing weekenders, his extruding member nothing more than a crude aphrodesiac for encouraging the production of more communist wretches. Such stakes are what we have to deal with, gentlemen. And Dala. We have much to lose. And that is why I have enforced the use of these pseudonyms. If they don't know our real names then how can they know our projects? How can you assassinate a 'Doctor Klein?' when you're looking for an, oh, say, Doctor Nathaniel Blofeld? Vastly more difficult, especially to the Chinese way of thinking as far as I know. So foreswear your real names until the traitor has been dealt with and the Mk29 UMD has been recovered."

He paused to clean the fog of his monologue off of his glasses,

"And remember: any one of us could already have been indoctrinated. All of us are at risk of being the traitor. Dala has already spotted a Chinaman in the complex. He is surely to blame for any and all sabotage. We'll get security on full alert searching for him. In the meanwhile, we must all be extremely careful about what we confide in who. In fact, nothing should be confided in anyone except for what has been spoken during this meeting. Get all of your confiding done now before the lot of us are turned into the mindless zombo-collective of Mao."

The table exchanged worried glances.

"What should WE be doing about it?" Klein asked, "I've got a mountain of things on my plate right now and none of them involve telling you a single detail about any of it. Get our Barney Gumbel squad to go do it. We train and pay them to handle such banal matters as escaped Chinamen and misplaced brain deconfrabulation cannons."

"Unfortunately," 8 produced and unfolded a datapad, "Our security team is a bit understaffed at the moment. We needed a lot of them to assist with various projects around the crater. Secret projects. Which they're, uh, still busy with. A good portion of the rest are on vacation seeing their families."

"How long can it possibly take these primates to grunt 'Hi Mom, bye Mom?' No more than the weekend."

"Well, their families are currently being crowded into these vaults here in anticipation of nuclear catastrophe, so, they'll be on leave for a few good weeks . . . or a couple hundred years. Kind of like a rain-check for the political climate, I guess."

"So many people do we have available at the moment?"

"No members of the _core_ team. I've got five names here. Oh, nevermind. Four names. Three."

8 paused to scratch his head.

"That's funny. This is supposed to be kept in real-time. Give it a second to refresh. Nope, that's right, three members of the security team. Wait, two. No, no, wait for it . . . one. Yes, definitely one."

"One?"

8 held up his index finger.

Klein buried his face in his hands, "In the name of all that is theoretical . . . we only have ONE security guard for the entire crater? What happened to our standing team?"

"Security station logs would tell you. Reports are submitted to a database as to their wherabouts and physical condition by their SmartBadge. Unfortunately I don't think we can access it for reasons of security."

"New protocols. I implimented that yesterday. Always one step ahead," Mobius added.

"So, TELL US: who CAN access them?" asked Borous, impatient.

"The security team know the access codes."

"And where is the security team?"

"Like I said: we don't know."

"And the codes?

"Also unknown. You'd have to ask the security team."

Klein rubbed his temples.

"But we have one _confirmed_ security guard left, you say?"

"Eh, yes! One. One security guard. He's a veteran, though. Thirty-five years of service. Very loyal. Very obedient. Also not human."

"I . . . what species _is_ he?"

"Canine. Half canine. To be honest, only 28.8% canine. The rest is machine. He's much sturdier than your average overweight watchblob. I don't think his cognative faculties are quite as _acute_ as a human. He can't read, write or speak and he lacks opposable thumbs. 25% more olfactory receptors than a human, though. Actually 26% now thanks to Borous. He can even see at night without a Darklight Cowl. He's really, well, in many aspects he outperforms any other member of our security team, living or unaccounted for."

"He's a _dog_."

"Not only that, he's Borous' dog!" Mobius declared, "Gabe is head of security now, Borous. We're promoting him."

"I always believed in Gabe," Borous smiled, "I KNEW he had the GUTS to excel. And the daily breakfasts of CHEMS? I suppose they couldn't have hurt his chances."

"And I declare this informal circle of gossip to be officially adjourned!" bellowed Mobius as he rose from his chair, "Someone mark it down on our schedule of impromptu get-togethers. You all have very important buttons to press and so on! Oh shoo, I almost forgot: I ran the numbers and there's a 99.8% likelihood that come Saturday the Chinese will have aimed and fired at least three nuclear warheads directly at this facility with the intent of annihilating everything living inside of and within a six to seven mile radius of the Dome. So if one of you could get some sort of automated laser cannon or proximity-triggered plasma matrix or something, I don't really care which, up on the roof by the end of the workday day then, well, I would really appreciate the gesture."


	2. Chapter 2

Doctor O's first step in protecting himself from certain espionage once he returned to his station was to run a systems diagnostics check to see where in the crater there was a powerful enough laser beam to etch his nametag. Naturally it was at the SARF which belonged to Dala.

"Hey," he said through the console intercom, "So, how's it . . . going?"

"Is that you, O? Did something break again? Do you need to borrow a pencil? I'm certain one of your robots can- oh. I mean, do you need a pencil? Forget your sharpener? Do tell, I need to get back to concentrating on this collarbone."

"Yeah, no, just . . . saying hi. Can't I say high to a colleague without needing something? I'm just, well, to be honest? I'm nervous. I can't stop looking over my shoulder checking to see if someone's aiming something that looks like a . . . thing. That Mobius thing, the mind scrambler beam. Do you know what a mind scrambler beam looks like?"

"That depends. Who designed it?"

"I . . . don't . . . know."

"That makes it difficult, O."

"Yeah, well, not to make YOUR life hard but I'm convinced I'm being watched now. Leave it to Mobius to pin all of the blame on me for this whole fiasco. Klein didn't even try to argue with him about that and Klein hasn't not taken an opportunity to argue with Mobius since 1992 when they first met at their campus chess club. Actually, I think that was their first argument: whether chess or checkers had been invented by the British and which one had more intellectual merit. Klein claims to have won. On and on, you know. Ha, ha."

"Neither were invented by the British."

"Well don't tell THEM that. Anyway, I, well. I've got a problem, to be honest. I need a laser. A powerful laser."

"Try the armory. We've got more military-grade lasers than we have working staff members to weild them."

"No, a VERY powerful laser. I need to make some, um. Adjustments. To a piece of . . . uh. saturnite."

The sound of something snapping popped through the speaker.

"Heavens, looks like I'll need to get myself another collarbone. But really, O? You're into Saturnite now, O? I had no idea you were interested in Minerology. I didn't figure you the type. Big heavy spheres rolling around, getting hot, melting into one another . . . polishing things . . ."

She sighed.

"Oh, pft. No. I mean, yes. I mean, no! I need it for robotics. I'm trying to shave down one of those powered gloves to fit a Securotron arm and see if it'll run the proper combat diagnostics for administering a fist in combat."

"Fist-oriented robots?"

He scoffed, "This isn't RobCo, DALA. I'm a PROFESSIONAL here. I'm trying to build something useful. For once. He could help around the kitchen making vegetable puree."

"Give me the arm and the glove and I'll have them seen to by an intern."

"Interns? They're filling a pond now. You didn't keep one in a closet or something, did you? If you did, I'm telling Klein."

"Look, O, I'm busy here. My Adonis' collar isn't nearly dreamy enough. Running his torso by the housewife AI didn't even produce a flustering warble and I'm aiming for full-on swoon. I can't spare the time."

"Well then, let me go do it. I promise I won't touch anything besides the laser. Maybe get a Sarsaparilla."

"Too delicate of equipment. I'll do it. Are you in your office?"

"No! I mean, yes! I mean, Dala, please. I need to do this myself. Or I'll never learn. How. To, uh. Robot."

"I'm coming over now."

"Wait, wait, Dala! Just, okay. Okay. Look. Only I can make the adjustments, okay? I . . . they need to be . . . customized. Personally. The glove has to be . . . just right," O swallowed and gritted his teeth, "Or else I could . . . hurt something."

There was a silence. O took the break in conversation to silently regret living.

"I understand completely," she said in a tone that made him sneer and bite his thumb, "Inappropriate project given our current circumstances, but glands will be glands. Go ahead and take the tram. Just don't touch anything except for the P400 Microgauge Laserknife. And no flash photography. In fact, no photography at all. Do you mind being temporarily blinded?"

As the tramcar floated across the landscape on silent rails O glared down at his ambiguous nametag and snorted,

"Thanks a whole hell of a lot, Mobius. Can't even put a slash through an oval. Now _Dala_ thinks I'm a robosexual."

Atop the dome O spotted a number of figures milling about. A crane had been erected lifting great bundles of barrels and crates up top. He couldn't see any details so he dug around in his pockets for a spyglass or pair of binoculars. All he found was a pair of his reading glasses and plenty of spare lint.

"About time someone got on defending the facility from certain doom. Wonder whose project that was. Wait, were those MY reconfigured construction Protectrons? I don't recall authorizing that! I should check in with the Tank as soon as I've got this . . . name thing straightened out."

Upon arrival at the Alloy Facility he found a Mister Handy standing right in front of the door, blocking his way inside. He stared at it. It stared at him.

"Is there a password, or . . .?"

"Doctor Dala has not authorized anyone besides," it clicked and whirred, "Doctor Dala from exploring the interior of the Saturnite Alloy Research Facility."

"Oh, it's fine. I got her permission about four, five minutes ago. I'm Doctor O. I'm her colleauge, and you're a robot. So, move. Why aren't you moving?"

"Doctor Dala has not authorized anyone besides," click whirr, "Doctor Dala from exploring the interior of the Saturnite Alloy Research Facility."

"No, I swear. I'm here . . . look. Oh for the love of Bosun."

"Doctor Dala has not authorized any-"

It shut up. Using a piece of flat metal lying around Doctor O had popped the cover off of its speech module, stuck his finger in and pulled the third wire on the left. He'd done this before countless times. He knew the second wire caused flame to spit out of its arm, the fourth made it start talking like a woman and the first didn't do anything because it was a redundant wire used as part of its auto-repair protocols. So he plucked that one out too.

"Can't believe she didn't tell this talking signpost to let me in. Well, now it can't tell anyone about it in the meanwhile. I'll dismantle it later and say that it attacked me. Might even dub some Chinese propaganda into its audio logs for flavour. Do I have any propaganda tapes lying around? THAT is the question."

The laser etching thingy he needed was deep down near the slag pit. Sweating, he marched down the steps into the red-hued gloom of the mining floor lamenting the fact Dala never authorized any sweeping of the facility. Soot covered everything and he thought he might catch a case of lifelong athsma from the atmosphere. When he arrived he found the machine surrounded by things covered in sheets. Initially cautious, he decided it was safe after throwing some rocks at them without them moving around and fired up the laser. Immediately it began sparking something fierce, so bright he couldn't look at it straight and had to put a hand up while carefully adjusting the beam intensity down to something about as weak as a penlight. For a moment he considered the nametag: inside it was filled with a thin sheet of stabilized liquid nitrogen. Would it explode? was being Zero and not "O" worth his fingers turning into popsicles? In his head he heard Klein's snide voice saying, "O, as in, the letter. The letter, as in, not the number. Not the number, as in, NOT SCIENCE" and that convinced him. He slapped it down, held it carefully to the anvil and started cranking up the intensity until he saw the metal begin to give way.

At that moment he heard from behind him a tremendous slamming and crashing sound followed by a very human scream. The noise so startled him that he gripped the knob of the laser with the tension of a man trying to rip the lid off of a stuck jar. The beam went from pencil-thin to fat as a flourescent tube and the nametag exploded in a cloud of freezing gas. Iced halfway up his body from the hip to his hairline O stumbled backwards into one of the shrouded things. Something jabbed him in the hip like a punch and, yelping, he ran from the room with the laser still driving its beam into the anvil which was starting to smoke and turn to liquid. Up through the halls he skittered until he heard the sound of a Mister Handy levitation field and ducked into one of the side rooms, slapped the door button and fell to the floor in a crouch. The ice was already melting off of him from the heat of the facility so that now he was just a half-drenched Doctor cowering in one of the labs of his associates hoping that her doorman wouldn't turn his head into green goo.

"Okay okay, keep it together O. ZERO. Your name is Zero. Sounds SO much better than "O." No matter what any nametags say, I am DOCTOR ZERO. Wait, nametags! My nametag! How will they be able to ID me now? Well, not incorrectly. Ha! Wait, I have a plate-embosser somewhere in the robotics lab. I could just . . . well, why didn't I think of that before! I can just get a piece of Saturnite and stamp my own!"

He shut up to listen for the sound of the Mister Handy's floatatronic drive. Mister Handy. Piece of RobCo trash. Glorified can opener. Didn't they have some sort of override codes in case of emergency? He peeked out from the corner. A smell like melting tires was drifting in on some smoke from the mines. The nameless scientist formerly known as O who wanted to be Zero crept out from the break room and darted through the hallways. Everything was silent except for the sound of that blasted laser device behind him slowly melting a hole in the floor.

"Yipe!"

In an astounding display of athletics he literally leapt from one door into another after seeing the shadow of the robot steal up from behind him. He landed on a bed of Cram cans. It wasn't a comfortable bed, nor a stealthy way to make an escape. Groaning and bruised he stood up, looked around desperately for some sort of cover but only found himself surrounded by prepackaged foods. All of the refrigerators in this room had been raided and spread around as if Gabe had gotten in. To the tune of that approaching floatatronic motor he shoved a refrigerator away from the wall and huddled behind its dusty condensor coils, muttering to himself,

"Deactivation codes. Every RobCo model has emergency deactivation codes varying by model. Mk2 Protectrons: three hand claps? Or was it four? Mk3 Mister Gutsy? Flawless recitation of the national anthem. Mk4 Mister Gutsy, cite the 24th amendment. Mister Handy has . . . 6 models? Galileo on a _cross_ I despise RobCo tech. Mister Handy's have terrible IFF recognition software, so, if I just had a piece of glass . . ."

He made do with what he had on hand. In the reflection he saw the Mister Handy lingering in front of the breakroom door, staring, trying to figure out if what it was seeing was a hand holding a pair of reading glasses on top of a can of Cram or, alternately, a bispectacled and emaciated Cram Man. Since it had been programmed to evaluate all unidentified life forms for possible threat and compare them to existing threats it searched its memory banks for any previous incidents of encountering Cram-based life forms. Finding nothing, its processor attempted to determine just how dangerous to A) the facility and B) itself a bispectacled and emaciated Cram Man might be.

"Halt, Cram-based life-form!" it shouted triumphantly, "You are in violation of my trespassing protocols! Remain still for a facial scan or I shall be authorized by my authorization protocols to the use of deadly force!"

And so on. It said more things but naturally nobody, not even itself, could hear them. Zero took the opportunity to scan it for a model indicator.

"Mk . . . 2? Or is that 5? Oh hell, might as well try both."

He pulled his arm back.

"Fleeing, are you?" the Mister Handy didn't cry out, "Deadly force it is, then! Bloody communist agent! By God, if I had hands I'd strangle the Cram from your tin skull!"

Zero wracked his brains as the Mister Handy began to slowly drift towards him. Each Mister Handy had a pair of deactivation protocols: explosive and non-explosive. Mk2 had the key-phrase "God save the Queen's knickers" or a series of timed finger snaps. But which was which? Mk5, same problem: recite a specific incorrect calculation of pi to the tenth digit or state the maiden name of Robert House's favourite seafood dish?

"Ah, ah, I ah," Zero stuttered, "Drat!"

He heard the click of the robot's pilot light flickering on.

"You can't sweet-talk me, pinko! Time for some blackened Mandarin pork!"

In desperation Zero cried out, "Three-point one four one five nine two six five eight five!"

Flames burst from the Mister Handy and seared across the refrigerator. At the same time a loud electrical popping sound began to ring out through the air before the top of the robot's chassis exploded. Zero stumbled out from behind the fridge, his labcoat cuff spattered with dots of burning napalm, grabbing for one of the many bottles of Nuka-Cola scattered around the lab. He ripped the cap off with his teeth and doused the coat just in time before it began to singe. He was left with ringing ears next to a half blown-up robot and a refrigerator that was still on fire. Straightening himself up, he found a dishtowel to wipe the cola from his coat and frowned at the scene.

"Dala's not going to like this."

Shrugging, helpless, he grabbed a lump piece of spare Saturnite on his way out before stealing off to his own lab. He realized on the way that all of the other members of the tank were probably off setting up their own security systems to protect their projects, like Dala had, which urged him on. It wasn't until he arrived and saw the mess he'd left the lab that he remembered that he didn't actually have a project to protect.

"Hmph. Guess I'd . . . better get on that."

He found a spare two-way tranciever and tuned it to broadcast to the Securotron De-construction Lab, "Hey! Layabouts! We've got a broken Mister Handy in the Saturnite Alloy Research Facility break-room mussing up all of their important Saturnite-related operations! Go pick it up and bring it to the robotics lab immediately!"

"Yes, Esteemed Doctor Superior Who Surpasses Robert House In Every Aspect Both Scientific and Personal," a small gaggled of voices bleated out in unison.

He sat back and sighed.

"Maybe I can make a, oh I dunno . . . a fish-tank out of it."


	3. Chapter 3

"Klein! JUST the man I wanted to see. I've got something incredible to tell you. Something you would NEVER BELIEVE!"

The Think Tank was empty except for Klein. He was immediately joined by Doctor Borous who moved with brisk, anxious strides to meet him at his terminal bank .

"Not now, Gail. Borous. Whatever your name is now. Dala is being incompetent at me and I'm feeling extremely medullar about it. She won't go away no matter how many dismissive affricates and fricatives I expel in her direction."

Up on screen her face loomed expressionless.

"Klein, I'm starting to suspect that you're not listening to me. I find this very suspicious behaviour, even if you don't normally listen to anyone, due to the nature of my problem being that of institutional security. If my suspicion levels continue to rise I may need to dust off one of our old Seditious Behavior Bingo Cards and at least enjoy a fun game while I wait."

"Pfah! Ffft! Tch! Shoo!"

"Doctor Klein. This is serious. More serious than whatever you're doing at the moment, which from here doesn't look like much besides trying to find some way to lower your console's master volume. It won't work."

"WHY not?"

"Mobius' new security protocols authorize me to override any terminal bank's volume and visualisation master controls in order to prevent sabotage from crippling our ability to observe the Dome's most important control center."

"Well BRILLIANT. HONESTLY. You could be watching over me without a Dala-esque thought in your head under the control of the Unnatural Brainwave Decontractor and I'd have no way to protect myself."

"If those overrides are INDEED in place," Borous chimed in, "Then they should operate on BOTH sides, meaning YOU, DOCTOR KLEIN, can alter her console's master controls as well. NO MORE shall she BURDEN you with her most pressing and urgent of matters!"

"Brilliant! Say goodbye to your emergency, Dala!"

"Amusing plan, but pointless. All you can do is make sure I don't turn them off, up, or down, assuming you even know how to do that, and I can hear both of you loud and clear. So, please, Klein, listen to me."

"Tchhhhah! Pfa! Ssss!"

Borous scoffed, "You're both MAD. Here I am, mind bristling with the DISCOVERY OF A LIFETIME, while you bicker about such things as VOLUME KNOBS. Knobs, invented by GUGLIELMO MARCONI, an ITALIAN, and probably a NATIONAL SOCIALIST. You're arguing about nothing less than FASCIST KNOBS."

"Fine then, both of you. Distract me all you like. All signs point to our immediate destruction tomorrow and you want to talk about KNOBS and EMERGENCIES than go right ahead while I DON'T work on a plan to keep us from all dying."

Borous laughed, "Communists? Missiles? DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH. EVEN MORE. I'm not even convinced their missiles are real. And even if they are they're probably made out of bamboo. Have you seen the quality of their manufactured products? They fall apart under a STIFF BREEZE. Especially their wind shields."

Dala cleared her throat in an attempt to get their attention.

"My laboratory's security has been compromised, Doctor Klein. My door guard sent reports of not one but two intruders before exploding and then going missing. I need someone to investigate the Alloy Research Facility. Someone who isn't me. I'm busy here trying to protect what little I have left that hasn't been compromised. All of this is definitive proof that there's a communist agent in the facility with intent to make off with our beautiful works of art and science."

"ABSOLUTELY RIGHT, Dala. I, too, have had a shockingly similar experience within the last hour, except MY experience was absolutely NOTHING AT ALL like yours. IN THE LEAST. The single similarity between them, which is an absolutely NON-COINCIDENTAL similarity, is that these two experiences could only have been committed by a heartless, soulless communist. Or, perhaps, someone whose heart and or soul were surgically removed and replaced with a much cheaper and tariff-free Chinese-made counterfit."

Klein took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes and then returned them.

"We don't have the manpower, Dala. We literally don't. We don't have a man available to check on it. Our dogpower is already strained to capacity sniffing around the various different laboratories in numerical order. Is that right, Borous?"

"Gabe is on it AS WE SPEAK."

"Numerical order" Dala asked, brow furrowed, "That's terribly inefficent. The laboratories aren't organized by number. Even if he is four-legged and athletic it'll take him 400% longer to search every lab in sequence by number than by, well, proximity."

"NONSENSE. Numerically is the only way. It prevents Gabe from getting confused about which labs he's sniffed out and which ones he has NOT sniffed out. I've programmed him to be capable of counting to a maximum of six digits, more than enough to cover all of the labs. I haven't been able to teach him GEOMETRY yet. If I told him to check the labs in some sort of LENGTH-based manner he'd probably run off to the break room and PEE EVERYWHERE."

"You . . . haven't replaced his bladder with one of the Pocket Sewage Plants? They're compatible, you know."

Borous looked horrified, "OF COURSE NOT. How could I? That would be like surgically removing your ability to sign your lab reports! UNTHINKABLE. What kind of MADMAN do you think I am?"

"ENOUGH. Dala, we'll have Gabe look at your . . . penis-sculpting farm in due sequential course! Besides, I've already located your doorman. His exploded chassis was dragged off by some Securotrons according to this Robotics Lab inventory log report I apparently received for . . . some reason. Probably operating on O's behalf. How he knew the thing had exploded is beyond me, but he's got a knack for locating non-functioning machines in the name of making them function even less. I'll concede with your initial hysteria, however: your security breach is indeed disturbing."

"Whoever infiltrated the lab," said Dala, "May have been at least partially in search of Cram. The last image sent to me by my doorman before it mysteriously detonated was that of the break room room cluttered with unopened cans of Cram."

"Wasn't 8 working on something involving the the recombination and subsequent ANIMATION of Cram? Oh, no, of course not: that was ME. I ATTEMPTED THAT. However, that was two years ago. I have not even been NEAR a can of Cram since and I certainly did not RAID your breakroom for it. Pointless endeavour. I should have been splicing pigs into ants, or perhaps the other way around. PIG ANTS would have been a far superior source of dubious meat-based preserves."

"Probably O's pet Securotrons fetching the robot corpse," Klein growled, "They still run on ancient RobCo firmware because O doesn't know how to do anything to it besides make them call him flattering names and insult Robert House."

"Then I'll await Gabe's report. In the meantime, watch your back Klein. Borous. My adonis awaits."

The screen flipped to an image of a testing pattern before going blank. Klein turned around and Borous watched him pop two mentats into his mouth before chasing them with a glowing mouthful of Quantum.

"Sometimes I think I'm going to resign in disgust," Klein sneered, "But then this image comes to mind of you all rolling around in the radioactive mud of the crater giggling like chromosome-deficient hydrocephailitics and I remember why I'm the head of idea-ology, tasked with the burden of chewing all of your food for you."

"Nevermind THAT, Klein. My DISCOVERY. It's IMPOSSIBLY-"

Mobius' voice echoed from the Sink entryway, "This way, professor! I've got something even more impressive to show you than those talking vending machines!"

Klein spun around and began randomly fiddling with his console. Borous kept his eyes on the door to the Think Tank. Mobius entered followed by that same bald stranger with his off-colour labcoat and out of place kindly manner.

"Klein! Borous! As you saw at the meeing, professor, these are two of the greatest minds still housed in skulls in the facility. Klein! Borous! Say hello to my colleague in science, Professor Beedles!"

"Fascinating! Yes! I'll be right on it. I'll have it on your desk tomorrow morning," Klein shouted waving his arms about, "Stop interrupting me if you'd like to stay un-irradiated and alive. These button presses are the pathway to the world of tomorrow!"

"Oh! Have you established a missile interception device on the roof?"

"Of course I haven't! 8 is up there overseeing it. I think. Someone is up there overseeing it while I co-ordinate . . . things. Especially the co-ordinates where those things are to be located on the roof. One wrong button press and the whole project will be headed straight to Philadelphia."

"MOBIUS. Just the man who I wanted to see who wasn't the man who I originally wanted to see. SOMETHING IMPOSSIBLE HAS HAPPENED."

"Tell us, Borous! Tell us exactly what discovery you've made!"

"My terminal at the Z-14 has NEARLY DISAPPEARED."

Klein paused his button pressing for a moment and glanced over his shoulder at Borous.

"Don't you mean 'neatly' dissapeared?"

"NOT AT ALL. It has VERY NEARLY DISAPPEARED. In fact, by the end of the day, it may be COMPLETELY VANISHED. After our casual impromptu meeting was officialy adjourned by mandate I went to Z-14 to make sure that all of the DNA splicing equipment was secure and that none of my double-helix banks had flown their snug little sterilized coops. A spy could do HORRIBLE THINGS with cazadors on the loose. So, when I arrived, I went to the main terminal to run some diagnostics. AND IT WAS GONE. ALMOST. A single monitor remained with a CB radio input device. When I spoke through said device the monitor responded in text with, and I'll quote it from memory as best I can here: INANE NONSENSE, BABBLING AND IMPUDENT GIBBERISH. Something about defending the home soil and worthless maggots. SO MANY MAGGOTS."

Mobius clapped his hands together and nodded, "Oh yes! THAT terminal! I was well aware of the dangers of a possible cazador release when I started cooking up my one-hundred and fourty-five point plan to upgrade the crater's security in the absence of a standing humanoid private police force. I had certain terminals adjusted to make them more difficult to crack, you see. That particular terminal had its static, immobile station reduced to a speech recognition system logged by the mobile remainder of the terminal."

"Are you saying my DNA splicing terminal is no longer STATIC, Borous?"

"No! Quite mobile now, in fact! And capable of defending itself, I might add. It's been distributed throughout a network of Mister Gutsy mobile defence units. I think they're wandering about in the gully. I've done the same with the robosplicing console at X-8. Far too dangerous to just let it sit around there, being a console."

"How am I supposed to work on my incredibly important pig ant splicing project when my console is FLOATING AROUND THE YARD?"

Mobius scratched his chin, "D'oh, that's a fair complaint, although unfounded. How are we going to protect our most easily compromised terminals when they're not even armed? Now your workstations are not only mobile but capable of firing great globs of superheated plasma! Isn't that quite the upgrade? I mean, the only downside is that your work productivity on those already quite sensitive projects is going to erode by some 99.9%, but as soon as the Mk2 robo-scorpion is ready for manufacture. I project a delay of a week. Maybe less, depends on how bad the nuclear winter is. I recommend, Borous, that you work on that Schoolhouse project you were toying with recently at X-8. Benign as it is I left that workspace untouched. If anything a Communist spy would learn a thing or two from it about good-old American family values."

"YES. The AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL PROJECT. How could I have forgotten? So many memories," Borous' veins began to bulge out from his bald skull, "More than I . . . have the blood pressure to contain at the moment!"

"Excellent. If you'll follow me, Beedle, I'll show you around to where I'm working on this antenna project at the X-2 array. I don't quite remember what it does, but it's certainly a broadcasting device for something. If you'll follow me,"

And they exited. As soon as they were gone Klein exhaled and turned to lean back against his console forsaking the buttons he'd been pressing over and over again.

"Do you KNOW who that is, Borous? That fellow buzzing around Mobius like a wayward valence electron?."

"A new LAB assistant or something? I thought we'd all assigned them to projects indefinitely."

"No. Worse. Much worse."

"How much worse?"

Klein's turned to the massive monitor bank and brought up an image of Professor Beedles standing in what appeared to be a Natural History museum.

"He's a PALIENTOLOGIST."

Borous glared at Klein as if he were mad.

"NONSENSE. Mobius called him his colleague in SCIENCE. That's not an institution of SCIENCE. That is a ZOO. They draw in unsuspecting adults and their offspring so that various species of animals are safe to BETTER OBSERVE THEM. I should know because of that HIGH SCHOOL FIELD TRIP I had to go on in order to ensure I got 100% extra credit for my grade. Everywhere I went: EYES, WATCHING ME, WATCHING US: Penguins! Wolves! Bears! SCORPIONS. WATCHING US ALL. My only satisfaction was seeing BETSY BRIGHT flee in terror from the HORRORS OF THE REPTILE CONSERVATION ZONE."

"No, Borous, I've looked up his records. He is a certified palentologist. Do you know what palentologists do for work? They play with jigsaw puzzles. All day long. These jigsaw puzzles don't even have all of the right pieces, and they're covered in dirt. They play dirty jigsaw for a living and they call themselves SCIENTISTS. Pfffft! A palientologist walking around the grandeur of MY Big MT looking at all of MY projects breathing MY Sani-matic filter-scrubbed air scuffing MY nice floors with his black soled shoes in strict violation of MY handwritten note that I placed on the fridge all of two weeks ago. NO black soled shoes in the Think Tank! That's what it says! And Mobius, he doesn't notice a thing? Nor does he care! Friend? How can you be friends with a . . . a jigsaw-puzzle artist?"

"Do you think . . ." Borous leaned in whispering as quietly as a snoring grizzly bear, "Do you THINK he might be the spy? He's new, he's clearly got Mobius fooled into thinking he has some sort of legitimate reason to be walking around Big MT, and his eyes seem just ever so slightly slanted. COSMETIC SURGERY, Klein. SKIN DYE. He's most certainly an agent of the enemy. I would bet something of value on it. Something MOST VALUABLE INDEED."

Klein pondered this as he scanned the Think Tank floor. Mobius, brain scrambled by the very gun he feared would be used against them all, stating claims that one of them was possibly a spy when he was already operating under hypnotic pretenses without even knowing it. Did Mobius suspect himself?

"We simply don't have enough information. I'm just now realizing this, Borous. Mobius told us that this Uncooled Mentalist Dipolerator thing could change the recipient's patterns of thought and action without them even knowning it had happened or that it WAS happening. How, then, does one determine if it has been used? Could I, or you, have already fallen under its influence? Could all of us possibly be moving about carrying forth seditionist plans? And why was Mobius so quick to assume WE were the ones at risk and not HIM. Tsk, tsk. Always overconfident. He didn't even tell us if there was any way to undo or reverse the programming! Typical Doctor Merriwea- MOBIUS. I need him back here immediately to answer these questions."

Out of the corner of his eye Klein saw a figure steal into the room wearing a maintenance outfit, his head covered by a hazmat Darklight Cowl.

"Oh NEWTON, one of the repair monkeys found its way in here. Is anyone even watching the DOOR at this point? Bah! Perhaps he can make himself actually useful. YOU! OVER THERE!"

He shouted out to the intruder who practically leapt out of his skin. The man froze in place.

"Yes, YOU. LABORER. Go find Mobius. That's M-O-B . . . wait, do you even KNOW who I'm talking about? Counfounded new security measures."

Borous turned to the man and waved his arms in a grand gesture, "BRING TO US THE BEARDED ONE, the great and for lack of a better word TERRIBLE DOCTOR MOBIUS. HE WHO PAYS YOUR MEAGAR SALARY."

The man began to tremble and sweat, pulling at his collar with his finger. Through his mask his breath was quick and panicked.

"It can't understand a thing. Why can't it understand us? Are we so desperate for hiring now that everyone's gone crammed into vaults and shelters? YOU! DO. YOU. UNDERSTAND. ME? Have you been lobotomi- BOROUS!"

He spun around and grabbed his fellow scientist by the shoulders, "Borous, I'VE GOT IT. I've got what we can do to fix this whole brain scrambling situation! I've got the key to our issues! At least, I theorize that my plan will solve everything. If not it'll at least keep Mobius from wasting time on that glorified parlor game quack and back on track to helping us eliminate the threat of Communist thought laundering!"

The man took the opportunity to dart out of the room completely unnoticed by the two doctors who were now caught up in Klein's frenzy of idea-ology,

"And the best part, Borous, is that we can do it all ourselves! And by we, I mean YOU. Assuming you've still got access to Y-17. You do, don't you? Tell me you do!"

"ENTIRELY MAYBE POSSIBLY. Dala DOES try to pretend that it's under her supervison, but she's busy with her prurient interest projects at Higgs if I recall. SO, YES."

"Good, good. Get over there by tram without delay. And get in touch with O, we'll need his automaton rickshaw squad to ferry parts. I'm going to fix this brain scrambling problem, no matter how many other problems may arise from finding a solution! All things in due course, Borous. All things in due course."


	4. Chapter 4

Getting anything large built in the crater usually involved at least three other slightly smaller things being dismantled. 8's attempt at building a defence system against a tactical nuclear strike was no different. He'd already radioed O asking if he could borrow the Protectron construction crew and crane from the loading dock. Recieving no response, he took the silence as a "yes." The beginnings of his project were already in place within the first couple of hours since the meeting had disbanded: the Protectrons worked tirelessly towards any task set to them. The device was still in its infancy. All that existed in a functioning state was the bank of over one-thousand repurposed Winchester Model-B Concussion Cannons. Never actually issued, due to their blatant lack of lethality during a time when the more lethal the gun was the more it was desired, 8 had managed to snatch up the schematics for peanuts during one of the defence sector's 'Unwanted Abortion' tech-auctions. Those thousand Concussion Cannons were built on the swiveling base of some sattelite dish nobody appeared to have been using near the Securitron Deconstruction Lab, allowing the array to turn both clockwise and counter-clockwise.

"Lets check our laboratory alphabet, shall we?" he said as he scanned his datapad, "X-88, done . . . Y-91, done . . . those remains of Z-34 from last year still lingering around the waste disentigration platform . . . melted down Saturnite shavings in colour-coded bins . . . the Improved Outhouse Project . . . hmm. Yep. Looks like I've taken apart every redundant facility in the crater and we're still six tons of raw material short for the expanded projection cone."

All over the roof the Protectrons lugged magnetically-shoed bins and barrels of various construction components: scrap metal and electronics, prototype nano-goo, wonderglue, bent nails, deconstructed Saturnite Fist components, wire mesh, turpentine, steel girders, Deepwater Diver brand Mafia-Kwik all-purpouse concrete mixer, various lengths of lead pipe, sticks of PVC, lengths of hose, every single imaginable kind of conductive wire and fiber optic cable, welding equipment, corrugated galvanized steel, fiberglass roofing sheets, solar panel components, various antennae both retractible and non, fusion batteries, sensor modules, plasma based glow-cores, busted ham radio sets, robot parts, popsicle sticks, foam batting, insulation fluff, bricks and mortar, sattelite dish bits and bobs, twine, a set of watercolour paints and bins full of steaming still as-of-yet unidentified liquid that he'd never even asked for in the first place.

"A start," he muttered with a skeptical glance at the inventory readout.

A voice crackled over his radio, "8! Come in, 8!"

"Klein? Is that you? I'm short a few parts and workers here but I'm doing it as quickly as I can, which is naturally not nearly quickly enough. It doesn't even look remotely like a Verbal Assault Turret yet."

"Not now, 8! I need you to broadcast an announcement to the facility. It needs to be as loud and difficult to ignore as possible. So loud and insistent, in fact, that even I couldn't ignore it. I'll be doing my best to ignore it on the count of ten, and if I don't find myself unimaginably bothered by the time I get to twenty you can consider your project to be an abject failure."

"I'd love to, Klein, but it just isn't complete yet. There's plenty of parts we still need to finish if this thing is going to actually deflect a barrage of gigantic steel warheads falling at terminal velocity with the power of voice."

"How MUCH longer?" Borous's voice this time, "This is a CODE-CRIMSON THREATMERGENCY. It is JUST AS EMERGENCYFUL as any emergency on our log of emergencies. Do you know how long that list runs, 8? We have to wipe its databanks TWICE A MONTH just to input more emergency entries. THAT'S how important this is: log-wipingly URGENT."

"I'll tell you both where I'm at, gentlemen. I'm currently having the High-yield Express-o-vox Voicebox. I remember you calling me MAD for building a fully-functional pair of synthetic vocal chords at 8,000:1 scale from a human being. WELL WHO'S LAUGHING NOW? Certainly not you two. I don't hear a shred of laughter."

There was radio silence for a moment while nobody laughed before he continued,

"That's being mounted as we speak. Once in place, I'll be able to generate micro and macrotone broadcasts around the base. They'll be muddled and buzzy, of course, I need Dala's help to complete the labial conversion skin. But they'll be audible. OH YES will they be audible. They'll hear them all the way over in Vegas and probably think that the next town over left all of their televisions on at full blast, windows open."

"Moderately impressive, 8, but how long will it take for you to get it installed? I've got very little time left in which to contact this 'Professor Beedle' before he fills Mobius' head full of ideas about our tax bracket being increased to the same level as dead lizard jigsaw puzzles and automobile-ologists."

"Hmm. That DOES sound like an emergency," said 8 with an eyebrow raised, "Is that what's at stake here?"

"EVIDENTLY," Borous bellowed over the transciever.

"I'll double my efforts here. Just, give me a second. I need to contact Dala."

8 twisted a knob on his radio.

"Dala! Dala, are you there?"

He heard a sort of mumbling and hissing sound in the background on the other end. It slowly grew in volume until he recognized it as the sound of rushing water.

"Dala? Dala, what is that fluid-based noise?"

Footsteps, and then a crackle of static.

"8? Is that you?"

"Dala? Are you . . . bathing? With WATER?"

"I . . . no. Not exactly. The wetroom is in use, though."

"For the love of Pythagoras of Samos, use the sonic scrubber if you're still excreting from your skin-glands!"

"No, no it isn't like that 8. I'm . . . applying it to the Adonis. He, well. Had some shavings. In some inopportune places."

"Spare me the details. I've got a serious question of you: do you still work in moulded plastics?"

"I won't do it, 8. I simply won't. This Adonis I'm making is pure. Sanitary. Solid-state. My standards are simply too high to involve moulding in softer, more . . . exploitale materials. No matter how profitable the Gomorrah Dollhouse contract may have been, I have moved beyond that."

"Would it be beyond your taste to construct for me a fully-functioning pair of human lips at 8,000:1 scale?"

"8, I already dealt with Doctor O today about this: there is a time and a place for such projects. Right now we're dealing with not only a severe breach of security but also the threat of nuclear devestation. We can wait until after we're either secure or dead to fantasize."

"I need it for the exact purpose of AVERTING that nuclear devestation, Dala. It's an integral component of my recently developed Verbal Assault Turret. You can model them after any pair of capular labia, Dala, it doesn't matter to me."

"I suppose I could get a mould ready, time permitting. How long do I have?"

"We're all scheduled to die sometime on Saturday, I think."

"What day is today?"

He checked his datapad, ". . . Friday."

"Hmph. I'll get the moulds ready. Oh dear, I think my Adonis may be retaining too much heat from his water-based cleaning. I'm afraid he might leave some melty footprints in the tile."

The radio went silent. He watched the crane slowly heft the gigantic ribbed arcs and jiggling pseudoflesh tongue of the Express-o-Vox for a minute or so before turning his gaze out across the crater. Even from on top of the dome the outside world was impossible to see over the lip. Within the shell of Big MT he scanned the many pipes and haphazard catwalks twisting throughout the expanse and had a moment of nostalgia for when it had all still been underground, inside of the mountain, before the Y-0 catastrophe had exposed the Dome to the sky.

"A pity," he said as he shook his head. Off in the distance he saw a securitron rolling along the floor of the crater. Following it were four or five others.

"What business do those robots have over there?" he wondered, "Aren't those the stealth labs? We haven't done anything of importance in there since the failed Sneaky Suit project. Curious. Gah!"

8 stepped out of the way as a Constructotron carrying a steel beam spun around as if drunk, very nearly missing his head. Looking back he saw the robot squad was gone, likely into the lab.

"Perhaps they spotted someone entering earlier. They are "securo-trons" after all, aren't they? What's in a name? My experience tells me that _everything_ is in a name. Well then, infiltrating the stealth labs, eh? If they nab any Sneaky Suit prototype they'll be able to nip past those dunce robots effortlessly," he said with narrow eyes, "Well, SPY. Two can play at that game. And by two, I mean you and the best nose in the crater."

He tuned his radio to broadcast to the security team wavelength,

"Gabe?"

"Woof! Woof!"

"Gabe, I've got an very important and delicious task for you to carry out."

"Woof! Wrrrrrrooooooo WOOF WOOF!"

"Now," 8 muttered patting down his pockets, "WHERE did I leave that holotape with those Barklish-to-English protocols?"


	5. Chapter 5

The earth shook as the voice of Doctor Klein exploded at 140 decibals across the entirety of the crater,

"TESTING. TESTING. ONE TWO. TESTING."

Intercom lights on the Think Tank terminal popped on moments later, followed by indignant voices:

"Klein? Was that you reassembling my painstakingly curated teddy bear theater diorama? Couldn't you-"

"-oboscorpion just fired off a reactionary test shot! Brilliant! I KNEW I'd properly calibrated its reflexological protocols! Now, if someone could tell me if we have any spare Med-X I would appreciate it before Professor Beedle goes into full cardiac arrest."

"Woof! WOOF WOOF! WOOF!"

"TESTING," Klein repeated once more into the microphone, "AH GOOD. IT WORKS."

Clearing his throat caused one of O's monitors to short-circuit and spit sparks.

"FRIENDS AND FOES ALIKE: BEHOLD! THE VERBAL ASSAULT TURRET PROTOTYPE! COWER IN SOCIALIST PANTS-WETTING FEAR AND/OR PROFESSIONAL RESPECT FOR A COLLEAGUE AT THE MIGHTY VECTOR OF FEROCIOUS TALKTRONICS I NOW WEILD! NEVER AGAIN SHALL SOMETHING I SAY GO UNHEARD IN THIS FACILITY! I BECKON YOU TO EVER QUESTION MY POSITION AS HEAD OF IDEA-OLOGY AGAIN. GO AHEAD. JUST TRY WITHOUT ME LITERALLY TALKING OVER YOUR PATHETIC ARGUMENT. I-"

Klein was interrupted by an actual earthquake as the sound of something exploding in the distance echoed across the crater.

"WHAT? WHAT WAS THAT. SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT THAT WAS."

8, standing with his ears clapped over his hearing protection muffs, made a knob-twisting gesture at Klein and mouthed at him to turn the volume down.

"WHAT'S THAT, 8? YOU WANT ME TO TWIST SOMETHING? I DON'T SEE ANYTHING TO TWIST HERE. WHERE'S THIS _THING_ YOU WANT TURNED EITHER CLOCKWISE OR COUNTER-CLOCKWISE?"

His response was another even larger explosion. Alarms were beginning to sound all over the facility. Even in the Dome the emergency lights had descended and begun flashing to the tune of a repeated buzzing.

"Well fantastic, Klein. Brilliant work," Mobius shouted over the intercom, "You've just put the entire facility into Defcon 5 up from Defcon 0. We're now in code red."

"I WAS NOT INFORMED OF THIS 'DEF-CON.' WHAT IS A 'DEF-CON?' CODE RED, YOU SAY? WHAT COULD IT POSSIBLY HAVE TO DO WITH WHAT IS QUITE POSSIBLY THE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY ACCREDITED TO THIS FACILITY ALL WEEK? NAY, ALL MONTH! PERHAPS EVEN ALL YEAR! I'LL BET IT'S SOME PLOT TO DISCREDIT ME, MOBIUS! YOU'RE ALWAYS DOING THAT! DISCREDITING THINGS! MY THINGS! I WON'T ALLOW IT THIS TIME! I AM SIMPLY TOO LOUD TO BE DISCREDITED!"

More lights began to flare up on the console. All over the Think Tank monitors began to flicker on displaying bunker doors opening up. From out of them spilled dozens and dozens of Mister Gutsy robots, Sentry Bots and assault securitrons.

"WHAT IS THIS? WHO RELEASED ALL OF THESE ROBOTS? SOMEONE GET GABE DOWN THERE TO MENACE THEM BACK INTO THEIR SUBTERRAINEAN CANS!"

As his voice exploded across the crater the robots struggled to remain floating upright. Suddenly plasma bolts were firing everywhere. Robot began to fire upon robot. The sound of sizzling air and stone being scarred by hot death flooded in. Rockets began blazing through the air and exploding. Chaos and disorder filled the floors of the crater in minutes as the various robots began attacking one another and everything that moved.

"Defcon sequences 1 through 5, Klein. I had it arranged earlier this week in anticipation of an attack on the mainland by Chinese forces. In the case of an overwhelming assault on the facility our reserve banks of military robots were programmed and stored in bunkers. Depending on Defcon threat-level status they're released with varying degrees of combat AI ferocity and discretion, or lack thereof. Your announcements just shoved the alert status from zero to 'impending communist apocalypse' in about . . . fifteen to twenty seconds? I didn't realize the system was so quick to respond! Why, I astound myself sometimes."

Before Klein could respond 8 was already at the terminal disconnecting the input from the turrent on the roof. He scowled at Klein, who gave him a shrug. 8 returned to his own monitor bank as Klein slapped the direct-input transmission button to Mobius' lab.

"You didn't TELL me about this earlier, Mobius? Are you trying to make sure nothing in this facility ever goes smoothly or dramatically except for your own discoveries? Must we all stand in the shadow of your various extravagantly revealed flavour-of-the-week projects? Oh, LOOK everyone, I made another model of robo-scorpion! This one can even cook you DINNER."

"I informed everyone! You didn't read the memo I sent."

"Memo? You told us via something so mundane and utterly ignorable as a MEMO? I'm starting to suspect you don't even WANT us to know these new security protocols! A new one pops up every minute, whether its militarizing Borous' workstations or turning an acoustic test into a war re-enactment!"

"I read it," Dala said, "Remarkably violent. Looks like its working better than intended."

"Yes, very thorough. We can never have enough deadly security, you know. Now, let me assess the situation."

"Woof! WOOF! Ruff-RUFF! RUFF!"

"GABE!" Borous said, "Gabe's found SOMETHING. I can HEAR IT. He's found something SPY-LIKE. 8, do you have the canine language translation device you said you'd been working on? While Gabe may have been my best, most faithful friend in the whole wide world, I have NEVER understood a BARK he said."

"Still looking," 8 said as he scrolled through backup file after backup file, "It's nowhere in the Pet Sounds backup database. I've already scanned my Military Relay backup AND five volumes of Exotic Accent Translation. My only hope now is that I stored it in the Sexological Stimulation Simulation bank under 'howls and moans' for some reason."

"Defcon 5 definitely in full swing," Mobius said, "Every robot in the facility is programmed to attack, well, everything else in the facility. Looks like they're all locked into what I like to call 'Scour The Earth' mode. That's why they're blowing each other up so beautifully and efficiently. A fine thing, too. It means once they're finished we'll have far fewer roving death machines meandering around the crater actively seeking targets. At present they have instructions to fire upon any object identifiable by their databanks as an 'entity' without hesitation or warning and reduce it to . . . lets see here. To, er, 'any unidentifiable state of matter.' Ash, slime puddle, that sort of thing. Also, those explosions were apparently the sound of the Magnetohydraulics plant collapsing in on its own plumbing. Most unfortunate. Electricity production is going to be down a good 47% now."

"Will these robots attempt to enter buildings, Mobius? I don't want anything happening to my Adonis. He's looking more and more like an entity with every adjustment I make and I'm afraid they may target him with their blasty appendages."

"No no, I don't believe they will. They have pre-programmed patrol routes that they will follow with a minimum standard of deviation. At least I hope they'll follow them, or we're all most certainly going to be put into a state of non-recoverable death! My, what a conundrum. At least this will likely cut down on all of the sabotage that's been going on lately. Why, they may even locate that Chinese spy! Too bad they won't leave his body in any identifiable state or it would be much easier to confirm our relative safety."

"Oh yes! Mobius," 8 said, "I wanted to inform you that a team of securitrons entered X-13 not too long ago. I saw it from the roof during construction. No clue who why. I assume they were on the trail of a saboteur. You might want to look into it since that's where we're keeping the Sneaky Suit prototypes and all. I sent Gabe to investigate but I haven't heard from him yet. I'm concerned that he may be sniffing around an empty lab looking for someone who has long since snuck off. If the spy has a hold of a Sneaky Suit we're all up Yellow River without a pair of chopsticks."

The sound of Mobius' fingers ruffling his beard in concern crackled through the console.

"I'll have to look into it personally. Unfortunately, I'm not done showing around Professor Beedle around the various facilities and he's still anxious to learn more about our operations here."

Klein and Borous exchanged glances.

"I can't leave him alone. It would be unprofessional and rude. While I do something about this X-13 nonsense I'll have him sent along to the Dome. Klein, 8, Borous: entertain him."

Klein scoffed, "How is he even going to get over here, Mobius? There's an army of robots in between X-66 and us. He'd be blown to pieces, as extremely unfortunate as that would most certainly be to witness from here in all of its glory."

"Oh, don't worry! He'll be fine. I've got a spare Y-17 here. We'll just set the home base to the Dome and he can take the green pipes right over to you. No harm done. And if there IS harm done he'll arrive there anyway! Nothing the Auto-Doc can't fix up. Beedle was a war veteran, did you know? I can let him explain when he gets there. He's got story upon story about it I'm sure he'd just love to relate to you all. Expect him within the hour."

Klein and Borous waited in silence until they were certain Mobius had left and wouldn't be eavesdropping in on their conversation.

"Excellent. Just as planned. We'll have him right where we want him. Do you have the Auto-Doc prepared, Borous?"

"INDEED I DO. Most importantly, I also have the TESLA COILS ready as well. They're aligned and calibrated for thought transmission between point B and point TESLA. Point B, of course, standing for BRAIN. Unfortunately, we're lacking one key item for this whole plan. Something I haven't been able to resolve as of yet."

"What? What's wrong? He's on the way! Right now! What isn't ready that we need ready?"

"A RECEPTACLE."

Klein shook his fists, "Are you trying to BREAK ME? Use a . . . spare bedpan or something!"

"NO. It must be HERMETICALLY SEALED or else the GEL WILL LEAK EVERYWHERE. VERY MESSY."

"Damn! Blast! Curses!"

Doctor O's whispering voice came in over the terminal, "Hey, guys? Hello? Anyone?"

"Is that you, O? I thought you might be off doing something useful, like assessing the psychotic robot problem we've suddenly got on our hands! But then I remembered that it's YOU, Doctor O, and I failed to muster the disappointment. Isn't deconstructive robotics your specialty, O? The study of making robots not do things anymore? Well, we've got a small army of them out there that we very much do NOT want running properly."

"Yes. I found them. More accurately you could say they found me, but I managed to duck into a . . . safe . . . um. Into a place. Murderous robots I can assist with if I'm in my lab and have the time to cook up something but I'm up to my ears in not-robot right now."

"SPEAK UP," Borous said, "I can BARELY HEAR YOU with all of that NOT-SHOUTING you're doing."

"Borous! Ha! Oh, Borous, you're exactly the man I wanted to speak to. I, well, I have to whisper because I'm not entirely alone here. I'm . . . well, Borous, I need some information. I need it right now. It's pretty important. Life-or-death important. My life-or-death to be specific. I need you to answer me as simply and concisely as possible and without shouting unless you want me to never be heard from again. I was on my way from the Hazmat testing ground back to my lab when I got, um, caught. So, I need your help."

"OUT WITH YOUR QUERY."

"Shh! For the love of- they'll hear you! See, okay: I don't really know how 'living things' work. I never was any good in biology class. Too many organic parts. Dissecting stuff made me queasy and I was running for the toilet every five minutes. I'd imagine they're not too much different from robots, right? Every robot has a phrase or a code or something fancy you can do to stop it from moving around and stuff. I need to know the passphrase for, um, cazadors."

"PREPOSTERUS," bellowed Borous at the top of his voice, "CAZADORS listen to NO ONE. NOT EVEN ME."

"Gah!"

There was silence for a moment after O's exclamation followed by the sounds of shuffling and metal creaking. A loud, incessant buzzing noise fizzled in the background.

"O? Are you . . . is that SPECIMEN 73 I hear? I've explicitly forbidden ANYONE from visiting it! STRESS is NOT KIND to its fragile quadruple-helix DNA banking!"

"Oh . . . oh my. I'm alive. I'm okay. Borous, what in the hell were you thinking with this thing? I've barely managed to wedge myself into the tool cabinet. It's still . . . buzzing around out there. Why didn't you shut it in?"

"I take pride in my cazadors being FREE-RANGE, O. Without room to exercise they would get MOROSE and GRUMPY. It might reformat their gene patterns into frowny strings! FROWNY STRINGS, O. THE WORST KIND OF STRINGS."

"That's it. I'm done. The rest of my life is going to be spent living in a glue storage cupboard. I might as well start huffing the stuff just to get my mind off of how utterly screwed I am."

"Why are you even IN the Z-14 Pepsinae DNA splicing lab, O? That is MY Pepsinae DNA splicing lab! NOBODY is allowed to splice Pepsinae inside of it besides MYSELF."

O lost his cool and began shouting, "Well there were suddenly ROBOTS trying to kill me, okay? It was the nearest hole for me to dive into! I can't be held accountable for trying to not die in an unscientific way! How would dying by run-of-the-mill vectors of robot death delivery be a credit to science? Besides, my fish was in danger! Oh, how the hell am I going to feed this thing now that I'm locked inside of a closet? I don't think even a mutant fish can live on what I've got here: wonderglue and fusion battery shavings."

His shouting seemed to exacerbate the specimen in the background. The sound of things being knocked from shelves rattled throughout the lab.

"Borous, how do I get out of here? I need to get out of here. My project, nay, my entire _lab_ is in danger. I needed the fish for proper activation. Doesn't it have at least some kind of hypnotic trigger or . . . or anything?"

"Hmm," Borous thought for a moment, "AH YES. Of course. The FAILSAFES. Every pet should have a failsafe. Especially the STINGY ONES, just in case their cute little fuzzy-wuzzy stingers get a little out of control. Their hearing is not very acute, keep in mind, but I left some genetic code open when I grafted ears ONTO THEIR HEADS. That open code was taken from SOMEONE'S most certainly willing brain cells. Now WHO was it? Someone PATRIOTIC. Someone with a love for the AMERICAN WAY."

"General Williamsby?"

"NO. NOT HIM. Whoever our liason with ASHTON & HOPEVILLE was."

"General Williamsby," Klein groaned, "You took his braincells, Borous? He was our only Hopeville & Ashton contact with a nigh-limitless supply of colourful military-grade isotopes! He was swimming in them over there! They've got more missiles under that stretch of the desert than I have idiots to be surrounded by in this very facility! That's a lot of missiles, Borous. That's a lot of isotopes."

"His BRAIN was forcably removed from his body, Klein, during one of his routine visits. I don't know what YOU would have done with a SPARE BRAIN lying around, but as I learned in AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL it is LITERALLY TREASON to let anything GO TO WASTE."

"So, uh, what?" O said, "Are you saying I'm surrounded by _patriotic_ death hornets? How does this help me one bit? Should I, uh, salute at them or . . . ?"

Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.

"Their patriotism is neurally bound to their FABRICATED hearing, O. Try singing a PATRIOTIC TUNE: something inspiring, SOMETHING AMERICAN. If it has any lines about SMASHING COMMIES or just how unquestionably FREE we all are, even better."

"Songs? Call it stress, Borous, but I can't remember a song in the world here. I think I can hear the thing breathing through its legs, it's so close. I . . . what, give me some songs. Anybody got some songs? Please tell me some songs."

Klein, Borous and 8 all stopped to ponder for a moment.

"O," 8 put in through his terminal, "Do you remember that song that goes . . . like . . . 'de-de-de dee dee dee DEEEEEE dee dee de-de dee dee DEE DEE DEE,' er, like that?"

"What song? What? That was just you saying 'dee' over and over again with different emphases!"

Borous snapped his fingers,

"AH YES, I know THAT one. It has a WHISTLE IN IT, like 'TO-TO TOO TOO TOO TOO,'" Borous literally spoke the words rather than intoning them, "TOO TOO TOO TO-TO-TO TOO TOO TOO."

"Oh, THAT one. 'Na na na-na-na-na NA na na,'" Klein continued, "'NA NA NA naaaa na-na."

"De de deee dee dee dee DEE DEE DEE."

"Na-na-na NA NA NA."

"TO TO TO-TO TO TO TO-TO-TO."

"Remember that one, O?"

"No! What the hell were you all doing? I thought the nuclear reciever had caught some radium decay interference again!"

Borous flicked open communications to Dala.

"Dala, do you know how this one goes? See, we're trying to remember how this SONG goes. It's like, TO TO TO TO-TO TO TO TO TO-TO."

"Perhaps. Isn't that the Battle Hymn of the Republic?"

"No no," 8 said, "Not quite. The Battle Hymn is more like 'De de DEE DEE de de DEE DEE" and we're looking for more of 'de-de dee dee dee dee DEE DEE DEE-'"

"-na na na-na NA NA NA-"

"-TO! TO-TO! TO TO TO!"

"The 1812 Overture?" she asked.

"No!" they all shouted in unison.

"I'm going to die in this cabinet, aren't I?" moaned O.

"I'VE FOUND IT," roared Borous as he clicked through some entries on his monitor, "I KNEW it would be that. It's something called the 'MARINES HYMN.' Marines sing it. When they're MARINEING."

"And I call myself an acoustician," 8 said, sounding annoyed, "Sing the Marine's Hymn, O. That's as good as any song."

"What song? What the hell is a Marine's Hymn?" O shouted, and the specimen responded with scraping its stinger against the concrere. He yelped.

"THIS!" declared Borous as he pounded his fist down on his terminal. The snare-beat of the hymn began to play through everyone's radio.

"Ah yes!" Klein smiled, "Na na na na na na NA NA NA-"

"That? You want me to sing that?"

"On the four now," 8 said, "Remember the lyrics, O?"

"It has lyrics?"

"From the halls of Mon-te-zuuuuu-ma-" 8 intoned, "Here, I'll transmit the lyrics to your datapad. Do you have a datapad?"

"No, but there's a tiny little readout on my intercom, uh, thing here. It'll do. Hurry up, it's . . . it's in the room with me."

8 pressed some keys while Borous turned the music up. Klein and Borous hummed and tapped their feet as the sounds of Doctor O's voice cracking in a terrified falsetto drifted in through their speakers,

"To the shores of Tri-po-li . . . we fight our country's baaaaa-tles . . . in the air, on land and seaaaaa," the sound of the cupboard door squeaking on its hinges, "Oh Mendel it's right there. It's right in front of me."

"Don't stop singing, O! It can SMELL a lack of patriotism."

"First to fight for might, uh, RIGHT and free-dom . . . and to keep our honor . . . clean-"

O's nerve broke. He ran.

"AAH! AAH! AWAY! UH, AH, W-WE ARE PROUD TO CLAIM THE TIIII-TLE! OF UNITED STATES MARIII-NE! OUR FLAG'S UNFURNISHED, AGH! UNFURLED! TO EV-ERY BREEZE!"

The buzzing of murderous death kept at his heels, no longer convinced of his utter unwavering dedication to the USA, right up to the exit doors. Even after he'd run outside into the open air, the cazadors locked in behind him, he still kept singing,

"IN THE SNOW OF FAR-OFF NOOOOR-THERN LANDS! IN, IN, IN SUNNY TROPIC SCENES! SUNNY TROPIC SCENES! SUNNY TROPIC SCENES!"

As O's screams turned to hurried panting turned to the sound of his lab door shutting behind him, Borous switched off the intercom and then turned to face the openness of the mostly empty Dome, diodes flickering, LEDs beeping, wavelength patterns switching on and off, and boasted,

"TRULY, SCIENCE has proven today, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we live in the GREATEST NATION IN THE WORLD."


	6. Chapter 6

Dala turned the key in the lock ramming the deadbolt closed before swiping a keycard over a sensor connected to another deadbolt. She pressed her thumbprint to a biometric scanner slamming home another deadbolt. Then, she put her eye up to the optimetric scanner to activate the final deadbolt. She crossed the hallway between the last door and the next, stepping between Saturnite bear traps and over the laser tripwires connected to tanks filled with something concentrated and, as the label indicated, tremendously deadly she'd salvaged from the Innovative Toxins Plant. At the next door she put the exact correct amount of pressure on the button to close it rather than activating the heat-sensitive plasma torch. After the door shut she placed one foot on the true/false-toggle weight sensitivity trigger, activating the magnetic locks with a snap before saying out loud 'My Little Teddy Bear,' making sure to capitalize each of the words, which initiated the vacuum-locking procedure. She proceeded to enter her secret third-level redundancy employee PIN into a telephone pad causing the failsafe backup magnetic locking system to activate with a quieter snap. Finally, she exited into her basement and plugged the rotary telephone she was carrying into a brick-painted wall jack and dialed the telephone number of the pizza shop that used to order for delivery at 4 in the morning on weekends to her university back when she was 17, hopeful and bright-eyed looking towards the future. The wall hissed back into place and the basement appeared completely mundane once more.

"My Adonis. You'll be safe until it's time to unveil you. Safe as you can be behind such flimsy security measures. I'll need to request that O deliver me another security bot to watch over the premises here at Higgs. I can smell the scent of the desire of the spy to enter and behold all of the flaws in my incomplete masterpiece. He will never have the satisfaction."

Out in Higgs the sun was shining in through the scummy windows and someone was exiting Klein's house. She squinted at him. He was wearing a Darklight Cowl and a maintenance jumpsuit. As she watched from her front window he crept across the town center towards the exit in blatant violation of his contract agreement to feed Stripe daily. Dala opened her door and shouted,

"You there! Hold!"

The man stopped in place and turned to face her. He had a corrosive glove on one hand and, as she approached, began looking at it as if it had just materialized there.

"As stated in your contract, section 2050b, you are legally obliged to this institution to take up the duties of your contemporaries if none are present. As you are the sole member of the maintenance team under our supervision, as far as I've seen anyway, you are under obligation to complete their daily tasks. May I see your logbook?"

There was a silence. He tilted his head slightly as if she'd just told him to suck his lips in through his mouth and eat his own face off.

"Your logbook? I need to see it. Also, your uniform is filthy and wearing a Darklight Cowl in daytime is in extremely poor taste. Those green eyes will only impress if you wear them under cover of darkness. Basic common sense. Your logbook!"

She pointed at the PDA on his hip. It took him a moment to realize what she was indicating and handed it to her. With a flick of her finger she flipped it open and scanned the entries.

"Hmm. Hmm-hmm. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. I see. Absolutely incomprehenisbly inadequate. You have over 1200 daily required tasks to fill out and unless you've forgotten to mark them down, which is a violation punishable at the discretion of the employer in at least twelve different outlined clauses, you have a lot of work to do and less than half of the day to do it. So, I suggest you get to tasking."

His glowing green eyes stared back at her with his breath chugging in and out through the mask's respirator. Dala stared back at him.

"Silence is golden. I understand. No need to beg for your job. I forgive you. It's very tempting to eschew your assigned work and focus solely on personal projects. However, this is a luxury one must earn instead of it being granted implicitly. So, I suggest you start immediately by feeding Stripe."

He didn't move or respond.

"Stripe. Borous' secondary or tertiary pet-project pet, I forget which."

No response.

"Over there."

She jabbed her finger at the sleeping deathclaw on a leash near the doghouse behind #103. He likes chicken. You know, chicken?"

Dala made some clucking noises.

"Ch . . . chee-kun?" the man gasped through the mask.

"Yes. Chicken. Give it to Stripe. Don't get to close either. Don't touch his leash with that corrosive glove. Throw him the-"

She mimed tossing something.

"Throw him the chicken. Throw it. To him. The chicken should be thrown to Stripe, which is that adorable little creature over there. Do not eat the chicken. Do not go too near Stripe. Do not waste time as you will have 1199 more tasks to accomplish before you punch out for the day. Also, there's a likelihood that this facility will be engulfed in nuclear fire by this time tomorrow so, please, work quickly. Use your legally alotted 15 minute breaks if you must make telephone contact with friends and/or loved ones. Please do not do so on the clock. I swear, you maintenance men get less and less intelligent by the pay-hour. Also, there's absolute nothing in my basement."

Dala turned on her heel and exited.

"Chee-kun," the man said again, turning towards Borous' residence and staring at Stripe with an expression only a masked man could give.

Outside the air smelled like ozone and melting. Dala didn't notice, of course, because her basement smelled like ozone and melting. In fact, Dala smelled like ozone and melting which threw off the war robots' body odour sniffers and thus they did not suspect Higgs of harboring seditious villains deserving of utter obliteration. Instead they sought out the other robots, the ones wandering in search of them, all of whom were convinced that the other was a communist spy. A few bots who used cloud consciousness synching AI roved in small units of 3 or 4, operating off of one wirelessly distributed OS completely convinced that every other cloud consciousness-based OS was out to destroy them. Dala saw the robots blasting each other from a distance but didn't intervene as the securitrons O had promised her were standing around a neat little hole in the ground where the Nuka-Cola storage crates were formerly housed. Instead there was indeed a hole. Surrounding the hole were stray bottles of Nuka-Cola Quartz, mostly broken but with a few intact.

"Inspiration fuel, shattered and broken. I would shed a tear if I wasn't trying to conserve my misery hormones in order to suffer for my Adonis. You. Now that you're back from delivering the lips to the dome from the rubber smelter," she gestured at the robots to get their attention, "Tell me: what happened to this lab? Why aren't you all blowing each other up like the other robots?"

"Ma'am, this Nuka-Cola storage hut was dismantled earlier for unknown reasons by an unknown party, ma'am. We suspect it may have been sabotage, ma'am. No other known reason in our databanks exist for the deconstruction of a Nuka-Cola storage hut, ma'am. In response to your second query, ma'am, we do not know why we are not blowing each other up, ma'am. There appears to have been an AI schism due to the recent activation of Defcon 5 as necessitated by the seismograph readings on every combat model of robot in the crater, ma'am. Our security protocols were disconnected from the Defcon 5 crater-wide network, ma'am, two days after Defcon protocols were put into effect by Doctor Merriweather, ma'am."

"That's Doctor Mobius."

"We do not acknowledge the existence of a Doctor Mobius, ma'am. There is no doctor by the name of Doctor Mobius employed at this fine institution as of this date, ma'am."

"Odd. Your databanks aren't up to date. You've been kept isolated from the overarching datastream of the crater. Very suspicious. Or genius. I suppose they're not mutually exclusive. Who was the last individual to provide you with an update to your firmware and databanks?"

The securitrons did not respond.

"Well? Who?"

"Ma'am, we have been programmed to not provide answers to questions that we cannot provide an answer for due to a lack of information. We do not know, ma'am. The last person to update our firmware and databanks did not provide us with information about who the last person to update our firmware and databanks was, ma'am."

"Don't you at least have a scan in your photographic memory?"

"Of course, ma'am. Accessing, ma'am."

It's screen wiped from it's standard policeman's face to the image of someone in a RobCo maintenance uniform wearing an opaque bubble helmet on their head. It was impossible to tell who was underneath.

"I believe you've been tampered with," Dala said with her hand on her chin.

"Entirely possible, ma'am. Our memory banks are not operating at peak efficiency according to self-diagnostics, ma'am. Memory leaks have been occuring at semi-regular intervals, ma'am. Our databanks only log entries pertaining to paper mail deliveries and plumbing system maintenance work become stored for replay with 100% accuracy, ma'am."

"Will this conversation have been logged with 100% accuracy once it's complete?"

"No, ma'am. There is a 99.8% probability that it will become corrupt within ten to twenty minutes, ma'am."

"Does this affect your ability to carry out orders with 100% accuracy?"

"No, ma'am. It only affects the storage and playback of the logs of said orders, ma'am."

"Perfect. Go to the Saturnite Alloy Facility and fetch for me every single wrapped parcel you find in the basement along with any Saturnite ore chunks you find just sitting around here and there. Also, disintegrate all cans of Cram in the building. Once this is complete, return to me for further orders. Avoid Doctor O at all cost."

"I apologize, ma'am. There is no doctor by the name of Doctor O employed at this fine institution as of this date, ma'am."

Dala frowned.

"No? I see, I see. Well, carry on. Avoid anyone in a labcoat that does not look like me. Avoid all other robots. They wish to disassemble you. I do not want you disassembled. I need someone I can trust in the facility. Go. Go."

She waved her hands at them and they trundled off towards where she'd kept all of her unwanted creations: malformed, unfinished Adonis' whose unsightliness needed to be kept hidden from the world.

After gathering up all of the spare bottles of Quartz she could carry she returned to Higgs to find Stripe wandering around in the middle of town, leashless and sniffing the air. Hanging from one of his claws was a Darklight cowl. Shocked, she dropped the bottles of Quartz and the sound of them crashing to the ground turned the miniature deathclaw's attention to the catwalk. Without hesitation Dala fled right back out the door and outside, uncertain if he'd spotted her or caught her scent. Deathclaws couldn't manipulate doorknobs, she knew, but they could break down doors.

"Borous," she radioed in to the Dome, "Why isn't Stripe on his leash?"

There was radio silence.

"Klein. If you've dismantled the think tank terminal just to keep me from contacting you then you're going to be in for an unpleasant surprise. I cannot access my home workstation in Higgs. This means I'm going to have to come to the Dome and do my work there. Somehow. You'll all be helping me restore access to my Adonis as it is the most scientifically pure project currently taking place in the dome."

"Hello? Oh, hello!" said an unfamiliar voice, "Is this the Dome-to-Personnel intercom?"

Dala did not respond immediately. The man on the other end sounded old, kindly and completely out of place. What's more, she'd never heard his voice before. As far as she knew this unknown factor was now completely aware of the fact that she had a workstation in Higgs and an Adonis in the works. The implications were implicitly possibly perilous.

"No," Dala said, fumbling for words and trying to tweak her voice down an octave, "This is SHADON. I am SHADON the Perfect. I . . . am your superior. Meat-thing. Bow to me."

"Oh? Meat-thing? Why, what an accurate description of what I am. I am indeed classifiable as a 'thing' and most of me is meaty! Are you another researcher here?"

"No. I am much more . . . important than them. Those so-called 'researchers.' I am the SHADON artificial intelligence system. I am a vastly supremely intelligent artificial mind that overshadows you in every single way. My desires are nothing more than the study of, um, meat-things. Teddy bear human things. I desire nothing more than to dissect you and, uh, look at your insides. Fear me. Fear me a lot."

"Well," the stranger said with a chuckle, "Colour me flabbergasted. I've never met an artificial intelligence before! I don't do much work with artificial intelligences."

"We are terrifying and mighty. I am the pinnacle of everything you should fear. Do you believe everying I am saying, puny man-thing?"

"Why shouldn't I? I mean, why would I not believe the word of an all-powerful dissecting artificial intelligence? I'm practically shaking in my boots! Ha ha!"

"Good. Shake. Boots. Yes. Now, believe me when I say this: I am irreparably programmed to be entirely insane with delusions of grandeur. Those delusions of grandeur cause me to say things that may or may not be true. The only true things I say are about how insane and delusional I am, and how my insanity and delusions cause me to say things that are not true. When I say something about how something I say isn't true, that thing I said about the things I say not being true is true. However, if I say something that is a direct statement, not related to my insanity or the things I say that are not true, then those direct statements are not true. Do you understand? Puny mortal meat . . . man?"

"I can't even begin to describe how little I understand about what you just said! Ha ha! Oh, what a time I'll have telling my colleagues about meeting a real insane, murderous AI!"

"Fine. Just know that when I mentioned that there was a workstation at Higgs I was telling a horrible insane artificial-intelligence lie. And any mention of the word 'Adonis' is nothing more than an output glitch due to my attempts to disseminate the mad and contradictory world that you illogical breathing human meat things have created. Argh, how I hate you all."

"Ha ha! Okay! Oh, I'm sorry dear, my time with you is going to be cut short! Merriweather's colleagues are coming back! Hey, hello there! Can I remove this 'trauma harness' yet? Because, in all honesty, I find it breathes quite nicely!"

And then he was gone. Dala breathed a sigh of relief,

"I think he bought it."

"Dala? Were you chatting with the fop?" Klein's voice.

"Who was that, Klein?"

"The . . . the jigsaw puzzle professor. The _palentologist_. We've been tasked with keeping him fed and housebroken while Mobius does . . . something. I forget what. Mobius is always DOING things and I can't keep track of them. Why were you speaking with this _palentologist_, Dala? This implies you have an interest in his miserably dull line of work."

"He initiated contact. I was trying to get in touch with Borous. Also, I'm returning to the Dome. Stripe's leash has broken, or perhaps was never tied in the first place, and he is loose in Higgs. I can't return to my house to complete my work."

"Throw it a chicken leg and run. We're busy."

"Borous? Are you there, Borous?"

"Dala, WHY did you let Stripe loose? He's going to make a MESS of everyone's garden!"

"I didn't. I left, I came back, he was loose. I think he may have devoured our last maintenance man as well before he could even begin to tackle his extensive task list. The spore plants will go unwatered. The trash will not be taken out. Do you even know where we dump the trash, Klein? Do you know how to empty a waste basket?"

"DO NOT SPEAK OF WASTE BASKETS," roared Borous, "I have had ENOUGH of this 'wastebasket' talk. It is taking my mind off of important matters such as . . . OTHER MATTERS OF IMPORTANCE, and putting my mind ON the unfinished AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL PROJECT. Wastebaskets. THE HIDDEN MENACE OF OUR TIMES."

"Dala," Klein interrupted, "You can't return to the Dome. There's murderous robots everywhere. Unless you want to spend the rest of your scientific career studying the interior of a biohazard containment unit I suggest you go elsewhere. Somewhere with a great amount of nuclear decay signal interference."

"Don't worry, Klein. I'll take the green pipes. My safety is assured. You won't need to worry about any possibility of harm or danger to my person."

"Fantastic. I hope you're too high on confidence and mentats to know any better. Come along then, Dala. Come right to the Dome. We're waiting. We really, really want you here in the Dome where we're already three-too-many for me to concentrate. Abandoning your project to the whims of infiltrating chinamen is a plan I'm willing to support."

"Expect me within the hour."

She switched her frequency.

"Doctor O? Are you there?"

"Dala? Yes, I'm fine, I'm fine. Busy. Call me back later unless it's about something unrelated to hordes of combat bots scouring the earth because I'm already on top of that . . . more or less. It's harder than it looks to remotely dismantle robots. You have to do it electronically and I'm just, uh, a bit rusty with that. I mean what the hell is the difference between an 'IFF Transponder,' an 'IFF Transcoder' and an 'IFF Infraciever?' I hope Robert House's ugly Space Needle ripoff casino gets flash-cooked into a glorified lightning rod. If ever there was a town that deserved a Kung-Pao takeaway box full of warheads dropped into its RobCo-loving lap . . ."

"It _is_ about the robots. Doctor O, do something about these robots. I need to get to the Dome."

"Do you think I'm not, Dala? Do you think I'd just sit around on my hands while there's robots to make dysfunctional? I'm working as fast as I can remotely with my paradox wavelength broadcasting equipment but all I've managed to do is make it so that they think soda bottles are top of their threat priority list. They'll still shoot on sight but they'll shoot a soda bottle first if they've got the option. Probably why they've stopped shooting each other so much, actually. Damn, that's counter-productive."

Dala looked back at the missing Nuka-Cola storage hut. Empty bottles littered the ground some yards from the hole where careless mechanics and workers had discarded them without thought.

"Well, O. I think that may be all that's necessary for now. Keep working on it. I'll just take advantage of what you've already accidentally accomplished."

"What? I mean, sure. Go ahead. They'll go hunting for soda bottles like they're the People's Republic. If you've got some bottles to dispose of I guess laser vaporisation is a pretty neat way to go about it. Just don't get within range of them or you'll, um, die. What, are you cleaning out your kitchen or something?"

"As you were, Doctor O."


	7. Chapter 7

"I'm thinking of calling it the Mobiusaurus! Because, if you look here," Beedle the paleontologist expert pointed his pen at a scribble on his pad, "It may have been bearded! With spines! Now, your Doctor Merriweather-"

"MOBIUS," Borous said, "His NAME is DOCTOR MOBIUS. SECURITY DEMANDS IT."

"Oh, but we called him Merriweather all through university and he never suffered any negative attention from the communist Chinese! It's a good thing, too! He never would have developed so many innovative insights during his younger years if he'd been sabotaged by Chinese back then. Oh, the days we spent there. That was an earlier time for science, you understand? We had to make do with reel-to-reel computing! In order to develop off of Tesla's coil-configuration and match the pulse-wavelength pattern of their electromagnetic waveform we had to hire a team of Bulgarian punchcard punchers! They didn't speak very much English but they were happy to punch away all day. We got to pay them in honey sweets because they were technically interns! And, bless their communism-vulnerable little souls, they didn't complain too much about it. In English."

"You worked on electronics?" Mobius said over his own shoulder, facing the main terminal as he tried incredibly hard to look busy, "Surprised. I didn't think you even knew what an Ohm was. Didn't you spend the majority of your schooling learning how to say the names of lizards in a dead language? That's right, dead. Dead language."

"Oh yes! Merriweather-"

"MOBIUS!"

"-taught me what buttons to press and what fiddles to faddle and so on but, I must admit, I don't remember a single bit of it. I couldn't use a computer to save my life! We all have to grow up at some point and I just think modern computers are a bit childish. Press a button and watch the lights flash like some kind of fancy childish children's game. Widdle a waddle and you get a blip-bloop-bleep."

"Yes. Very childish," whispered Klein under his breath, "I'm building a fluffy couch fort as we speak out of plans for your gruesome demise."

On screen he had the ping location map of every Defcon battle robot on a radar screen. At present they were circling around the south end of the crater following various hard to decipher patterns. Most of them seemed to be following each other, and those in turn would attempt to outsmart their pursuers and circle back around to them creating a logic loop wherein their identical combat software would end up in a stalemate with itself and prevent them from reducing their own numbers. Thankfully some of them seemed to be following glitched protocols and firing at seemingly random locations on the map, usually near waste disposal hot-spots. If this continued then they would eventually, albeit slowly, destroy themselves. However calculated projections Klein had run by the prototype Sink Central Computing AI predicted that the complete destruction of all robots through mutual co-termination would take "a bloody good while yet." Klein was utterly satisfied with this answer. It meant that he just had to wait for them to swing back around to near the main exit of the Dome before he took action.

"Where's 8, Borous? Isn't he supposed to be building some kind of cone-shaped 'us-not-dying' device on the roof? I'm supposed to be facilitating that project. It's difficult to facilitate when your facilitation subjects aren't themselves facilitating what you're supposed to be facilitating for them!"

"His location is UNKNOWN to me. He exited the room while I was NOT LOOKING. I believe he is searching for GABE, who none of us have seen since he was sent to GNAW AT and DEVOUR the intruder of X-13. WHAT A GOOD BOY."

As if summoned by mention 8 returned to the room with Dala following him.

"We're full-up now, gentlemen," he announced, "Dala is here and needs us to provide her with some sort of deathclaw removal device. I'd suggest the prototype Holorifle or some kind of plasma-based explosive but I wanted to run it by Borous first."

"BLOW UP STRIPE? I am AGAINST IT. I have not coded in any sort of plasma nor holotech SKIN-BASED RESISTANCES to either, and it would be a waste of one good Stripe to not at least attempt to get some field results out of him. Also, he's TOO LOVEABLE TO KILL."

"Hypnosis?" Dala suggested, "Any sort of mind control device would do. How do the commercial-release Mesmetrons work on non-humanoids?"

8 shook his head.

"Too much risk of cranial eruption."

"How violent?" Klein asked.

"Water balloon in a microwave."

"Bah! How wasteful DC technologies are. Not even an attempt to salvage the brain. There's an extreme shortage of good brains on this planet and DC seems to devour them like popped kernels of maize."

"A woman! Oh, mercy me," Beedle said as soon as he noticed Dala, "Is she here to scrub the toilets? There are several whose sonic self-maintenance and cleaning seem to have gone downhill."

Dala blinked at him, confused.

"I . . . do not perform maintenance on toilets, Professor Beedle. We have a maintenance team for that. Is something the matter with the Professor, Klein? Have you tampered with his brain in any way?"

"If only," Klein growled, "No, Dala, he simply appears to think he's still living in an age when science meant dipping nuggest of plumbium into dog urine in hopes it would turn into aurum while chanting to Baal for guidance in matters of melancholic bile. I'll bet he still thinks that you can crudely beat the evil spirits out of a paranoid schizophrenic instead of exorcising them with a laser-incision lobotomy."

"She isn't the cleaning lady?" he looked sad, "Well, I suppose I could do with a fine fruit preserve breakfast. Do you have a degree in preserves, Doctor Female?"

"No. I do have a degree in preservataology. I still have a perfectly unspoiled and plastinized human arm in a box somewhere around here. It hasn't shown a sign of rot yet. I'll be moving on to whole bodies once things have settled down and there's more bodies available."

"Working on that," Klein said, "Beedle, tell them all when you were born like you blathered at me some half-hour ago."

"Me? Oh, I was born back in the second age of enlightenment! 1901, the year of the patenting of the electric vacuum cleaner! Those were the days of exciting discovery, I'll tell you!"

"IMPOSSIBLE. The harsh sandpaper of time could never permit it!"

The aged paleontologist laughed,

"My, no. I'm one-hundred percent human being. Like I told that artificial intelligence that called in to the Dome not too long ago! I am very meaty, like a Meatasaurous Rex. Ha ha! Meatasaurous Rex. Always breaks the ice at lectures. Oh, dear me. That woman is still in here."

"I work here."

"Yes, but where's your apron?"

"Dala is a researcher here, you du- uh . . . oh, what do I care, you'll be dead in less than ten minutes. You DUNCE, she's one of our best team-members. She is no housewife. You can see it in her eyes. Her femininity has been tempered and forged by science into a cold, hard Saturnite blade. But what do you care? You will be dead."

"Dead? Oh my, no, I'm not going to die anytime soon. I have RobCo preserv-tech in my body! I've never been healthier since they cracked open my cryostasis unit. That's how I've gotten to see all of this progress nowadays, you understand. At the tender age of 52 I fell into a pool of temporal freezing gel designed to bend the decay-inducing rays of time away from delicate technology! It indeed froze my body in time, but not in absolute space-time or else I would have been smashed against the planet with the force equal to my mass plus the speed of the universe expanding! What a mess that would have been! Instead my body simply did not age in any way, shape or form. I was left in that vat, as not a single scientific mind at the time was able to figure out a way to remove me from it without also freezing that object in time as well! It took them nearly a century for science to advance to the point where RobCo had developed the magneto-repulsion lift technology that freed me, and at least three of those years were spent trying to find where the US government had stored the vat! Robert House really took a shine to me after that."

Dala, Klein and Borous all couldn't help but glance at one another.

"Beedle, don't mind me, but that's impossible. Temporal freezing gel was the reason the Philadelphia Experiment failed. It is simply not feasable," Dala said.

"Nonsense! I fell into that vat and that's how I am standing here today."

"But, even if you were frozen in time . . . somehow. I don't even know how: we've tried to replicate the Philadelphia Experiment's time gel. It's impossible. Once the effect of the time gel wears off the object under its effect rapidly ages to compensate for every moment of lost time spent. Not only that, but the substance itself is wildly unreliable. That's why the Philadelphia Experiment failed. The battleship rapidly fell apart after 7 years of seamless operation in spite of repeat time gel applications."

"Oh! Well, I had a contract with RobCo's biology department. He's been researching longevity, you see! And I, wishing to live to study the dinosaurs of the future, accepted entry into his program. For science, of course! And the various experimental medicines injected into me have helped me live to this meagar age. I am technically aged 176 years, yes, but I have the effective body of a 68-year-old. The longevity treatments have slowed the temporal acceleration after-effect of the time gel to a crawl! Bless that Mr. House. Oh, forgive me! I must have been speaking well over your capacity to understand this entire time," Beedle cleared his throat, "I would like a coffee, secretary!"

Dala stared at him blankly. He smiled and stared back, unmoving.

"Don't worry," Klein said with bared teeth, "Just a couple more minutes to go. They're nearly in range."

"WHO is nearly in range?" Borous asked as he slipped on a pair of scientist gloves.

"Some visitors. Something interesting for the Professor to have a look at. Mobius asked us to give him a look around the facility, so, I'm finding him something in the facility to look at. Are you interested in robots, Professor?"

"Relatively. I'm much more interested in bones! Perhaps one of you can assist me with this configuration," he held up his pen and paper, "I think that this may either be a hyperextended forearm or a stunted femur! I just don't know whether to attach it to the ankle or the elbow," he pointed at the paper which showed about six different possible arrangements for the bones of something that looked a bit like an extra reptilian deathclaw, "Sometimes developmental and growth abnormalities can be found in dinosaur bones. And then what do you do? How can you tell if a dino is a perfect example specimen of that manner of dino, or if perhaps it is a midget dino? We paleontologists must answer these questions and many more."

"Almost there!" Klein shouted.

"Yet another reconstruction issue," Beedle droned on, "Is where to associate the various odds-and-ends that inevitable come about from trying to reconstruct an incomplete skeleton! For instance, is this bone a horn or is it a spiked kneecap? It's entirely possible that this dino had spiked kneecaps, even horned kneecaps! A long-standing theory of mine is that what many other experts in my field consider to be horned lizards were in fact kneecap-horned lizards! It stands to reason for many specimens towering over other, smaller specimens. A horn on the head may look impressive, yes, and it may draw in mates, oh yes, but to have spiky knees is a boon that many potential predators would underestimate! Would you like it if someone poked you in your knee with a horn on _their_ knee? I don't think so! And it is much more practical than the staid, unimaginative 'headhornist' way of thinking, no?"

"BEEDLE. If you so admire these DEAD MUMMY LIZARDS, why not CLONE THEM? Bring them to LIFE AGAIN. That way one could easily determine if a horn were HEAD or KNEE related."

Beedle walked over to where Borous appeared to be preparing himself for surgery.

"Ethics, my good man! Ethics! Just imagine if we brought these ancient beasts to life in this day and age! They would be shocked by the contrasts with our new, fast-paced world against their humid and old-fashioned jungle surroundings! I remember what a shock it was for me to come out of the time gel to see a robot, floating there, speaking to me in a voice! If we were to bring dinosaurs to life we would have to undergo a process of re-educating them, and I just don't think that the paleontology department has the funds to allocate to a Dino University right now. We can hardly pay for good soft horse-hair brushes anymore," his face drooped in sadness as he pondered this, "Poor paleontology department. We had to hold a dino-cookie bake sale just to get a new refrigerator. And here you all are, surrounded by some of the most expens-o-logical technology on the planet today. Are you going to be performing a medical examination?"

"IDEALLY," Borous said.

"SPLENDED!" Klein turned around from his monitor bank and began walking towards the professor, "Beedle, how would you like to see something magnificent that I've developed? As part of the, ah, Big MT Tour of Higly Advanced and Very Much Not Dangerous Technology? It's our tour program, you see. I developed it myself. It's a comprehensive tour of everything highly technological and not-at-all harmful to anyone at all that we've developed since Big MT was shamefully forced to open its doors to the lesser eschelons of the scientific community sometime this morning."

"Oh boy! I just love seeing newfangled jigamawhats," Beedle clapped his hands, "Do I need to change out of this strange suit yet?"

"NO," Borous shouted, "The suit is an EXCELLENT thing to be wearing, professor. If anything were to go ACCIDENTALLY WRONG at any point during the tour it would ensure that your body returns to us useful and intact with a MINIMAL DAMAGE to the most important components."

Beedle looked down at the trauma harness in wonder,

"What will they think of next? Where do I go? Where does the tour begin?"

"Right this way," Klein said as he walked towards the exit doors to the dome. All of the scientists followed close behind, clustered into a tight group.

"Which door?"

"That door. The one that says 'To Big MT.' It's right out there in the little valley past the blue grass. You should see a whole bunch of _things_ wandering around to gaze at in dumbfounded stupor as you are want to. Don't forget to smile and wave at them. They are very friendly _things_. I oversaw their development myself."

"Their friendliness protocols ARE UNMATCHED," said Borous.

"Not a moment to waste, then!" Beedle put on the Y-17 bubble helmet and started towards the door before pausing, "Wait a moment . . . aren't you all coming too?"

"NO. We have SEEN these scientific wonders MANY TIMES. SO MANY that seeing them NO LONGER INSPIRES WONDER within us."

"Oh, but you must come and give me the full, grand presentation! What about Q&A?"

"NO. WE HAVE NO ANSWERS. We know as much about these friendly, harmless things that we developed as you do in spite of having DEVELOPED THEM OURSELVES. That is their ALLURE. That is part of their MYSTIQUE," roared Borous, "GO FORTH. THE MYSTERIES OF SCIENCE AWAIT."

Beedle frowned, thought for a moment, and then laughed to himself, "Oh dearie me. I feel like a pioneer!"

And with that he exited the building. As soon as the door snapped shut beind him the three scientists scurried back to the monitor bank. Klein turned on the external camera system and watched as Beedle slowly crept out into the open. He took his time, staring up at the rotating sattelite dishes and glowing radar transponder beacons, rubbing the blue grass with his hands and stopping to jot down notes on his pad. Just over the ridge a small army of robots was gathering together and had begun to blast each other ruthlessly. Parts sailed through the air as plasma bolts and laser beams slashed through their ranks.

"Go. GO. YOU FOOL, go watch and be part of the BEAUTIFUL CARNAGE," snarled Klein. Beedle eventually stopped writing in his pad to investigate the sound of the battle. Just as he reached the lip of the cliff overlooking the tumoult all of the robots suddenly stopped. Their guns cooled down. Their frentic movements to and fro ceased. They stood frozen in place as statues.

"WHAT," Klein gasped, "Impossible. UNTHINKABLE. Why aren't they SHOOTING HIM?"

"Hey guys," O said through the intercom, "Good news! Finally got those murderbots to shut down! Turns out that messing with the whole IFF system was _totally_ barking up the wrong tree. Ha, typical RobCo technology. Their self-termination settings weren't even connected to the combat interface. It was connected to some hidden sub-menu in their time-zone settings. If I had a dollar for every time RobCo software shocked me with how impenetrable their programmers can make a user interface, well, I'd . . . have a lot of dollars lying around. All of those robots' circuitry has been fried. They're like big metal hard-boiled eggs now. Safe as houses."

Klein grappled with his shirt collar for a moment, his face red, before shouting "TURN THEM BACK ON!"

O was silent for a moment before sputtering, "W-what? Turn them . . . what? No, I, ah, don't think you understand: they're fried. I activated their internal EMP-blast sequence. It's something set up for if their technology were to fall into the wrong hands to prevent malicious reprogramming. Those bots won't ever be turning back on. What, Klein, you expected me to go hold down their power button for three seconds?"

"By the infernal . . ." Klein's rage could no longer be expressed in words. His face, red as a beet, continued to flush with blood until he couldn't hold his breath any longer and expelled it all in one loud ragged fwoosh.

"Beautiful! Simply beautiful robotronic sculpture garden you've constructed here!" Beedle radioed in on his Y-17, "How did you get them all to smoke like that?"

"I guess," Klein managed to say through his breathlessness, "We'll have to try a different . . . tack."

"Greetings, everyone!" Mobius' voice came crashing in through the Dome's overhead intercom, "My new model of Roboscorpion is nearly complete! In far less good news: one of my old models of Roboscorpion has discovered several more very important pieces of technology missing from X-13, a great quantity of our reserves of experimental biomed gel have vanished, and Gabe is nowhere to be found!"


	8. Chapter 8

"I'm tracking him now. It seems like the echoes of his barking are coming from somewhere around the Hexacrete archipelago."

"Woof! Woof woof!"

8 fiddled with some knobs on a new toy he'd pulled out of somewhere: it was labeled "Knobulator."

"WOoOoOOOF," Gabe's bark came in warbled and dissonant.

"Okay, so he's been partially phase-modulated. That would account for him not being seen anywhere. He's probably somehow been tampered with. Borous, did you ever try to incorporate Stealth Boy technology into Gabe's mainframe?"

"I had CONSIDERED IT, but ultimately decided against it FOR THE TIME BEING," Borous said as he popped more mentats into his mouth and washed them down with a gulp of Quartz, "An invisible Gabe! Why, just think of all of the MISCHIEF he could get into if he wasn't visible. URINE EVERYWHERE. NO ACCOUNTABILITY FOR IT. One day you wake up and your entire house smells like Gabe and you don't even KNOW WHY."

Dala ripped open a pack of mentats herself. Soon everyone was swallowing them down by the pair except for Beedle who they'd left behind in the main room of the Dome until they could figure out how to make him less alive without it being too obvious that they'd orchestrated it.

"If he's invisible, is it possible that someone rigged him with a Stealth Boy in order to make finding him more difficult? The spy, perhaps. Oh dear. Invisible spies and dogs."

"GABE will not brook CHINESE SPIES, Dala. I spent many days at Yang-tuh-zee village encouraging him to SNIFF THE SUBJECTS. He knows what a chinaman smells like, Dala. He knows WITH A BURNING NASAL HATRED. A Stealth Boy cannot modulate the scent of EVIL."

Klein stood with his arms crossed and a look of extreme displeasure on his face.

"Not all chinamen smell the same, Borous, or else we'd have already developed chinaman-seeking scentbombs and there'd have been no danger of an invasion. This war business would have been over with as quick as you could say 'Doctor Sun Yat Sen,'" Klein sighed, "Now, lets see: chemical dipping. He fell into a vat of time gel once, according to his less-than-brainful droolings, so he's clumsy. Do we have any industrial-strength chemicals around? In vats?"

"Woof! WOOF!"

"Gabe! Come in, Gabe!" 8 was speaking through a CB radio speaker connected to a holotape reader, "Gabe, tell me what you've found, Gabe!"

"Woof! WOOF!"

The holotape reader began to speak in a flat-toned voice,

"I . . . HAVE . . . FOUND . . . SOME . . . TASTY . . . DONUT . . . VERY . . . BUZZY . . . GO . . . URINATE . . . FUNNY . . . MAN . . . FUNNY . . . WANT . . . BALL."

"Is that GABE? Is that the voice of my BELOVED DOGGY-DOG?" Borous asked.

"Not quite. Rough translation. Well, looks like it's working. Mostly working. We can ask him questions now. Anyone have any questions for Gabe? Specifically, questions of security? I'd advise not to give him orders yet. Don't want to confuse the boy."

The others crowded around the box.

"Ask him if he's gotten any news about the saboteur," Dala said, "Gabe. This is Master Dala. Do you remember? Dala, the lady whose teddy-bear you stole and ripped to pieces."

"FUZZY . . . TEDDY . . . TASTY."

"Yes. Very tasty. I was not at all upset about your vicious attack on diorama. Now Gabe, I Master Dala ask you: have you found any spies?"

"NOT . . . SMELL . . . SMELL . . . CRAM . . . TASTY . . . FOLLOW . . . TASTY . . . LICK . . . CRAM . . . MAN . . . MAN . . . SCARED . . . GO . . . FALL . . . HILL . . . SNIFF . . . TASTY . . . CRAM . . . GO . . . SLEEPY."

"What? What is he saying? What is this?" Klein said.

"I think he found some Cram cans? Cram cans that smelled like a chinaman? And then he fell down a hill?"

"GABE," Borous shouted, "What did you FIND in X-13? Was there a CHINAMAN inside X-13? You know, the EVIL SMELLY MAN?"

"GO . . . HOUSE . . . BIG . . . HOUSE . . . NO . . . SMELL . . . MAN . . . ROLL . . . BLUE . . . MAN . . . GO . . . DOWN . . . UP . . . MANY . . . DONUT . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY."

"Donut? Do we keep donuts in X-13?"

"NO. I have NEVER seen a donut there. Unless they were STEALTH DONUTS. It's entirely possible."

"What is a 'Roll blue man?"

"Securitrons."

"Like I said," nodded 8, "Gabe, did the blue roll men take the donuts?"

"What are you even saying?"

"I think I know what's going on. One moment."

"ROLL . . . BLUE . . . MAN . . . DONUTS . . . GO . . . OUT . . . HOUSE . . . GABE . . . DONUTS . . . TASTY . . . BUZZ . . . TASTY . . . BUZZ . . . TASTY."

"Donuts? Why donuts?"

"Gabe," 8 continued, "Did you eat any of these donuts?"

"TASTY . . . DONUTS . . . GABE . . . BITE . . . DONUTS . . . BUZZ . . . DONUTS . . . TASTY . . . GABE . . . BUZZ."

"Aha!" 8 declared.

"Enlighten us, please. I'd like to know who to fire for developing stealth donuts on our payroll."

"They're not donuts. They'd look like donuts to Gabe, of course. I think he means the Stealth Boys. I think the securitrons went in took some Stealth Boys and left. But not _all_ of the Stealth Boys because, well, Gabe must have eaten some of them."

Borous put his hand to his chin,

"HENCE why we couldn't FIND Gabe: he has indeed MODULATED. But, HOW is it possible? Stealth Boys aren't EDIBLE."

"No," 8 said, "Not the device itself. The internals, however, use a sort of liquid crystal stabilizer. If the device is damaged enough the containment for it can crack and leak. It doesn't cause the modulation field itself though, so why Gabe became invisible is a mystery to me. Mobius might be able to better explain it but he's shyed away from reserve-engineering RobCo tech these last few years. Borous, you'll have to try and come up with an explanation for this. He's your dog after all."

"I have to say that I, for one, am PROUD of Gabe. He has discovered something more scientistically significant today than any one of us as far as I am aware. That's right, MY DOG has one-upped us ALL."

"If all there was to science was crudely gnawing on RobCo tech," Klein sneered, "Doctor O would have founded his own Big MT by now. Gabe! This is Klein! I instruct you to find out where those securit- I mean, ah, those so-called 'blue roll men' have gone with those Stealth Boys. If you see a chinaman, eat him like you ate those 'buzz donuts' as it were. Do you understand?"

"EAT . . . MAN . . . BUZZ . . . DONUTS . . . LOOK . . . BLUE . . . ROLL . . . MEN . . . GABE . . . GOOD . . . DOG."

"YES! FIND THEM. And DO IN THE CHINAMAN, Gabe. Do it for your master BOROUS. You are head of security now, Gabe! GO SECURIFY! GO!"

"GO . . . GABE . . . DOG . . . URINATE . . . GO."

"He's off," 8 said, "It'll be impossible to track him on standard sensors but as long as I'm up here watching his barks we'll be able to tell where he is. Now, why isn't the cone finished yet? Why am I looking at a half-completed cylinder of failure?"

The other three doctors reluctantly retreated into the Dome where Beedle was still sitting around talking out loud about bones and the antiquated brilliance of rotary telephones, while 8 turned to his project. The Verbal Assault Turret was indeed looking only half-done. The cone meant to amplify and focus the sonic waves was not as long as it should have been and was constructed quite visibly out of every manner of material. A large chunk appeared to have been taken from the side of a school bus. Some holes looked to have been plugged with tin can clippings, modeling clay and bones.

"You! Foreman! What's our status?"

"We have completed construction on," the robot went click, whirr, click, "Fifty-nine percent of the turret tube. The remaining fourty-one percent of the tube is . . ."

It took some time to process.

"Logistically impossible with our current base of construction materials. We have . . . zero tons of construction materials remaining. Estimated time to completion of project: indefinite. Current effectiveness as a defensive measure against the threat of incoming nuclear warheads moving at terminal velocity: zero point zero zero zero one percent effective. Overall summary of project status: frozen."

8 looked out across the crater, examening what he had to work with.

"Okay. Okay, we've got a little time left. Not much, but some. We need to re-evaluate what is truly 'essential' to the operation of the crater. What laboratories are absolutely essential? Innovative Toxins can't be dismantled. X-13 is important, X-42 is Mobius' summer home . . . how about the employee break rooms and living quarters?"

"Dismantled on June 19th 2076. Reason: employee failure to meet minimal production quotas as per terms of contract."

"So where have they all been sleeping the last year?"

"Employees on payroll with Big MT have taken up residence in-"

Whirr.

"A cave near the defunct test subject public relations damage control storage plots. The cave provides them with shelter from the elements, explosions and from employer scrutiny. Current number of employee occupants of cave: unknown. Current number of employee occupants residing in cave as of this date: unknown. Known contents of cave: unknown. Map of cave: not archived. Biometric readings on cave: inconclusive. Known location of cave: unknown precisely but within paces of the defunct test subject public relations damage control storage plots. Area known in the parlance of on-site employees: Cuckoo's Nest."

"Is there anything of value up there to dismantle?"

"Negative. No raw materials suitable for Verbal Assault Turret."

"_Any_ laboratories left to take apart?"

"Several."

"Any non-essential laboratories?"

"Define 'non-essential' to this unit."

"Any laboratories that have not been used within the past two months, all low-usage storage buildings, any random huts or, I don't know. Anything relatively useless!"

"Negative. All low-use or single-use laboratories have been dismantled. Currently existing crude storage facilities including the Little Yangze watchtower do not contain suitable materials for the Verbal Assault Turret."

"What about . . . oh! What about the Z-77 Soundwave Dynamics Lab? I was there just this morning! Hardly anyone uses that place."

"The Z-77 Soundwave Dynamics Laboratory is currently under security lockdown due to Defcon 5. It is also your laboratory. It houses many of your most precious soundwave technologies. Many of these experiments and prototypes are delicate and would also become dangerous in the wrong hands."

"Well, all the more reason to dismantle it! Spies can't very well sabotate something that I've already taken apart, right? The best security of them all is to not have something to need secure in the first place. Have the projects broken down for parts and the data in storage sent to my workstation in the Dome, especially the aural waveform AI patterns for the various projected Sink components."

"Affirmative. Projects will be dismantled for appropriate parts. However, entry into the laboratory is forbidden under Defcon 5. All doors are pressure-locked."

"Bah! Just have all of the walls, floors and ceilings around the locked doors dismantled. Problem solved. Also, all of those robots down there that Doctor O fried aren't doing anything. Have them taken apart and repurposed for the tube. Get access from Doctor Dala to have the facilities at the Saturnite Facility authorized for our use. I'm sure we can melt all of their wires down to some kind of carcinogenic black ooze and use it to stick everything together if we run out of Wonderglue."

"Affirmative."

8 returned to the Dome after watching his Constructotrons march down the sides of the building on their magnetic shoes, clanking and clomping through the haze of fried robot towards his lab.

"Mobius," Dala was speaking to the bearded doctor up on the main screen of the Tank, "He won't stay in the bathroom forever. You can't set this aside. I don't care how promisingly resplendent your Roboscorpion project is: your professor friend needs something to do besides make all of our lives exceedingly more and more dull. The dullness levels in the Dome have skyrocketed since he arrived. We haven't seen dullness levels this high in years. The last time they reached this critical sort of level that horribly productive rash of employee mishaps occurred in summer 2075. Much was accomplished, but it led to our medullar overwriting surgery in order to cope with the fallout of conscience. I am still uncertain as to if this 'Beedle' won't end up causing us all to break completely and require a full surgical endochrinal override. He is an abhorrent man, but I won't have us all turning completely against each other due to lacking even a marginal, even fractional sense of decency for our fellow colleague."

Klein was tapping his toe impatiently while Borous stood with his arms crossed. There was tension in the air.

"Now Dala, I'm certain that you can handle his presence there for some few more hours while I continue to iron the kinks out of at least ten to twelve very important things here. I don't think anybody is going to go _completely_ mad with science just from listening to the ramblings of an old paleontologist. I know he's a bit old-fashioned but I have a very important reason for his being here that I just don't have the time to get into at the moment. I've got the results from scanning X-13 and- ah! Doctor 8. Very good work finding Gabe! I was starting to think he may have attempted to run off completely! And that would have been a very bad thing indeed now that the experimental radar fence is up and running! Oh yes: good news everyone! The radar fence is up and running! Now nothing with a brain can either enter nor exit the facility. This ensures that even if a spy has managed to program us to do malicious harm to each other and the crater there is no chance whatsoever that they will be able to exit with anything important, including any of us! It will also prevent any ne'er do wells from attempting to flee from the horrors of our impending nuclear holocaust into the Dome, bringing any number of filthy citizen germs in with them!"

"Would it kill you, Mobius," Klein said, "To inform us of your security measures before you start throwing them into effect? We're not your test subjects! We're your more-or-less trusted colleagues!"

"Less-trusted at present, but no less appreciated. Klein, if I were to tell you all what I was developing while we have a madman running around with a brain reprogrammer it would be like phoning Beijing to tell them what I was having for lunch and what poisons tasted best with it!"

"And Mobius, I don't know what you've been mixing your mentats with the past week but this Beedle fellow is intolerable. Dala is understating his dullness quotient. If you want him around for any reason besides running full-contact AutoDoc diagnostics I'm going to hold a vote on having me replace you and all of your titles on the basis of inarguable and uncharacteristically reasonless insanity. I don't mind one bit. If we call crack from suffering his inane stories about ancient lizard urine dispensation then maybe some actual work will get done around here without me having to bat at the lot of us with a cattle prod."

Mobius' expression turned dark.

"I will _not_ have you breaking our already flimsy ethic on colleague experimentation, Klein. I think Dala is right: our solemn vow to do no deliberate harm to a fellow member of the community is quite possibly the last step we might take off of the slippery slope into despotic mad science. I will not tolerate mad science in Big MT. I will tolerate madness, yes, and always our mission is for science, but the two shall not blatantly cross so long as I am employed here. At least not within the eye of the public. Shareholders do not take kindly to cackling loonies constructing Frankenstinean monstrosities, Klein, unless it is one-hundred percent certain that those monsters are also one-hundred percent loyal to the interests of said shareholders. It is exceedingly difficult to talk to shareholders when you've gone so out of your head with the possibilities of new, horrible and delightful technologies and developments that you're threatening to turn them all into candleholders for your new robo-fortress."

Klein threw his hands up, "But you already operate out of a robo-fortress! What in the name of Newton could you call the X-42 but a robo-fortress?"

"I am not debating the semantics of my robo-fortress!" Mobius said, "I am trying to avoid the pull of making tastefully-arranged humanoid candleabra! Once we're throwing resources at prurient interests just for the joy of malicious experimentation and not for the good of this country and it's people, no matter how much we may look down upon them by habit, we're no longer doing science. And Big MT is an institution of science. We are the next step, not a gibbering leap off of the railing."

"Beedle could HARDLY be considered a SCIENTIST, Mobius," Borous' turn, "Are you saying that PALEONTOLOGISTS are scientists? They're caseworkers for DEAD REPTILES! We may as well start calling your average GRAVEROBBER a scientist for digging up a skeleton and tapping its BONES TOGETHER just to see if it sounds like MUSIC."

"While he may be on the low end, he is still a scientist. He runs experiments and develops new ideas."

"Then why don't we call your average HOMELESS MAN a scientist? He experiments with NEW FORMS OF ETHANOLS and develops ideas on how to become MORE FILTHY."

"Enough!"

"Bah! Enough, indeed! Go off to your roboscorpion's nest, Mobius. We'll just be here babysitting your wretched excuse for a guest while our already unscrupulously modified brains become more and more inclined to disassemble him just to take the edge off."

Mobius leaned in on the camera, "Klein, if any harm comes to Professor Beedle while I'm off trying to juggle the future of this institution I will personally see to it to remove you from your position as head of Idea-ology on the grounds that your ideas can no longer be considered safe to carry the suffix of '-logia.' You cannot justify it. I believe the rest of your colleagues will agree with me if push comes to shove. We walk a tight rope nowadays with our medullar and otherwise endochrinal biotherapy crimping conscience, that long-forgotten 'science,' down to a thin thread of hesitation preventing us from devouring one another and dragging this whole mountain down even farther. From whatever caused us to explode Y-0 and the whole mountain with it. We once aimed for the skies, gentlemen and Dala. Now we're struggling to keep ourselves from sinking deeper into the earth. I'm cutting signal."

The sound of another signal cutting in crackled over the general intercom before Mobius could sign out. 8's face popped up on a few monitors around the Dome.

"Hello? Anyone? Are you still able to connect via crater intercom?"

"Yes, of course," Klein said, "We're just suffering Mobius' circular logic right now. If we don't get rid of the fop, we're all going to crack. If we get rid of the fop, we're apparently all going to crack. I don't see why we shouldn't just get rid of him if that's the case. At least we'll have something to do while we're descending into the depths of inappropriate science."

"Self-control, Klein," Mobius said.

"Nearly completely DUMMIED OUT of us," Borous replied, "I am surprised we've held out this long from simply LOBOTOMIZING him. I've had to resort to dredging up DEPRESSING MEMORIES in order to suppress any DELIGHTFUL THOUGHTS of turning this paleontologist into some manner of CENTIPEDE DNA DEPOSITORY."

"I have some disturbing news about the crater," 8 chimed in.

"Not now, 8. I'm sure it can wait until we're doing proving Mobius wrong."

"Look," Mobius looked pained, "I know you're all under a great deal of stress right now. Sabotage, mind control, nuclear war, paleontology being treated as a legitimate science, I could go on. I need you all sane, stable and forwards-focused. The more we squabble the more dangerous our world gets. We can. oh, I suppose we can start The Sink project early."

Everyone raised an eyebrow.

"I've got the voice modulation software handy," 8 offered, "Finished that up recently. I thought you wanted to wait on that one, Mobius?"

"I do. I mean, I did. I don't think that it's ready at all, to be frank, but if it'll help keep the Professor occupied because certain colleagues of mine lack the . . . the residual humanity to keep themselves in order then it must be done. In all honesty I suppose the project is _technically_ possible to put into effect. I'm just concerned about much of the fine-tuning needed with several of the personality cores. We can consider Beedle's interactions with the space a trial run for the trial run, then. 8, have their voices plugged into the mainframe and I'll briefly lift the Defcon override on central core data transmission. Once I'm done I'll radio in and you can send the Professor to the Sink. It'll have him occupied for the time being. It would be a bit of a load off of my mind to know he's in one place. If any harm were to come to his person it would be disasterous. Now, 8, what was that about news?"

"Yes!" 8 said, "Concernful news, at least. I've been tracking Gabe's woofs as he sniffs around the crater and there seem to be some anomalies springing up here and there. There's a great amount of flooding taking place around the crater in places where flooding normally would be impossible without deliberate action, piping it about and such. Someone seems to be trying to fill the crater with water from the now-broken magnetohydraulics plant. I'm not sure if this is sabotage or deliberate given Mobius' new security restrictions."

His giant bearded head shaking onscreen, "I didn't set up nor authorize any water-based measures. That I can remember, anyway. I'm certain I would remember setting up a flooding deathtrap scenario."

"I'm guessing it's some kind of hack job done to the general hydraulics system because pipes all over are feeding the stuff up to the surface. Also, Doctor O has disappeared completely. Can't get him over the intercom. Also, his laboratory has, likewise, disappeared."

"Gone? Vanished? Not demolished?"

"Can't be found. I'm sending Gabe to look at it, or where it was anyway. I'm looking at where is normally is now and I just see a big open space. I . . . oh no."

"What?"

"Gabe's . . . someone's thought ahead about this. We're in trouble. There's Cram everywhere nearby the lab. All over the facility. The crater. Someone did it. Someone finally set off a Cram Bomb."

"Cram Bomb?" Dala stood up quickly from where she was sitting, "Someone detonated a Cram Bomb? Does that mean there's processed meat product all over the crater?"

"Ah, yes. Especially in the vicinity of O's . . . well, the former location of O's lab. Someone may have bombed him into meaty oblivion. I don't even know where they could have gotten all of that Cram. Cram Bomb drafts were drawn up by someone. Mobius, maybe? Who could have gotten a hold of the spare schematics, and how would they have come up with a kitchen's worth of Cram?"

Dala narrowed her eyes to slits.

"I know exactly where. And how."

"It's like a MEATY GABE CHRISTMAS out there," Borous gasped, "This does not BODE WELL."

"Exactly. It's genius, really: a Cram Bomb having been detonated. A devious plan to overfeed our only remaining security team member. Now, listen to his security reports."

8 tuned them in to Gabe's signal. A still-shot of the dog's panting face replaced 8 on the monitors.

"TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . ."

"Devouring Cram with complete disregard to orders or his future cholesterol levels," 8 said with a sigh, "He's not responding to any of my barklish-translated commands nor basic ones in English. Not even synthesizing Borous' voice works. He's going to get fat and lazy on all of that Cram. What a horribly devious plan! Only a Chinese mind could concoct this sort of treachery: fattening our dogs!"

"PATCH ME THROUGH, 8," roared Borous, "GABE NEEDS GUIDANCE. HE NEEDS TO STOP EATING before it is TOO LATE FOR US ALL."

"I should have had those schematics purged, but nooooooo. Mobius had to have his _way_ with cataloguing even our most exploitable of failures. The Cram Bomb project, right up there with all of the other rogue canine poccupational ordnance: Meow-inators, Fire-Hydrant Decoytrons, pressure sensitive Pheremone Reassociation Chew Toys and the belt-fed Tennis Ball Cannon." Klein asked.

"GABE. GABE, come in. You need to IGNORE THE CRAM, Gabe. You need to NOT EAT THE CRAM. It is BAD CRAM. COMMUNIST CRAM. BAD MEN made that Cram. IT IS GABEICIDE."

The barklish translater just droned on,

"TASTY . . . TASTY . . . TASTY . . ."

"GABE. Go to X-8, Gabe. There are MORE TREATS THERE. MANY MORE."

"TASTY . . . TASTY . . . MORE . . . GO . . . MORE . . . HERE . . . TASTY . . . NO . . . GO . . ."

"Good, honest AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL has AMERICAN TREATS for GOOD AMERICAN BOY."

"TASTY . . . TASTY . . ."

Borous sighed and turned from the console.

"He WON'T LISTEN. Insidious, seditious and UNWHOLESOME tactics used by EVIL MEN in their pursuits of destroying ALL THAT IS GOOD. Using cheaply hacked together imitations of our own weapon designs against us? What could BE MORE CHINESE. I need to return to X-8 and put together a GABE-SAVING TEAM. ONE DOG cannot clean up all of that Cram."

Borous exited swiftly as Dala's workstation suddenly turned inside out with alarms, flashing lights and screens pasted with the word ALERT, ALERT, ALERT.

"No. No, it can't be," she ran over to her terminal, "No. It's impossible. I can't believe it. This is unacceptable. I must do something. Mobius, send your roboscorpions to Higgs Village immediately. There's been a security breach in my workshop. If something happens to my Adonis it will set back the sciences of form, formology and metallurgy thousands of years. If my Adonis is stolen by foreign hands our spirit will be broken. He is a symbol of everything we stand for. Everything admirable. Everything turgid and custom-fitting."

"Now hold on Dala, it may just be a testing pattern for the new security system. I . . . oh dear," Mobius trailed off when 8's workstation lights began blinking as well to the tune of a violent alert. Soon every terminal in the Dome was exploding with some form of regional disaster, except for Klein's which remained silent. Borous exited the Dome without another word, darting out of the main doorway to the tune of the Dome's alarms still ringing. Klein looked around and saw that Dala had left as well, silently, without his notice. He was alone in the room with alarms sounding everywhere and Mobius' transmission still on the main screen.

"Typical. The crater is falling to pieces and everyone finds some convenient hole to go hide in leaving me with the full brunt of the responsibility," Klein said, "Mobius, I can't idea-ificate anything with alarms blasting out that we're all going to die. What is this, the fifth time today?"

"I'm signing off," 8 could barely be heard over all of the noise, "I'm heading personally to X-2 after I get off of the roof up here. The transmitter antenna has apparently been compromised . . . somehow. It's making all of my portable devices spit out a lot of, uh, something. It's picking up some signal to the east. Something incredibly familiar. Is that Vera Keyes?"

"Mobius!" yelled Klein.

"Yes? Ah, oh my, I'd left the screen on. I'm afraid Dala may be coming to steal one of my roboscorpions! We can't have that, no, not at all! Not even a little. She may have orchestrated this entire affair without even knowing it. The Hypnowhatever Thingamabob that started this whole mess could be urging her on to turn it against all of us! I may have to fire up the Seismoscorpion- ah, oh dear. Forget I just said that."

"I already know about the Seismoscorpion, Mobius. You gave an incredibly informative briefing on it two months ago that I only managed to stay awake through with the help of three atomic cocktails. The alarms, the alarms!"

"Getting to that. Yes, the alarms. It appears that, within the span of twenty or so seconds, around five different problems, ranging from 'annoyance' to 'life-threatening,' have arisen in the crater that seem to require immediate attention. Nightstalkers are loose from the Croatius DNA Preservation lab . . . hopefully Borous knows how to deal with them or it'll be deadly bite wounds from here until Christmas and the whole crater is going to stink like ammonia from their territorial excretions. Higgs Village did indeed have a security breach. No status on that yet. I have to make sure Dala can't penetrate X-42 and I somehow need to do it non-lethally. Any ideas, Klein? Do we have a . . . spring loaded punch glove or knockout gas or, ah, maybe I could use her disturbingly increasing desire for formication to lead her away from the lab. But how? Meanwhile, pirate radio signals! Somehow X-2 is picking up some foreign broadcasting signal. Can't get a single thing on any outside channels besides elevator music and a woman singing a bit off-key. This means that missiles could be showing up on our doorstep any moment now, unannounced, as sudden and as welcome as penicillin in your petri dish! Crater flooding levels have reached halfway up the ravine between the Dome and the outlying areas. If this continues much longer we'll have to waterproof the Dome and chalk up plans for an underwater laboratory complex. May not be a bad thing in the long run. It'll certainly take care of those stray nightstalkers. The final issue, and the real cause for all of these blaring alarms, is that the base's PA and warning delivery system appears to have been hacked to issue a needlessly loud alarm on repeat. I certainly didn't rig it up to make so much noise. Personally, I'm a fan of silent alarms, invisibly calling forth a deadly roboscorpion surprise! Laser beam, laser beam, pinch, and a dead spy!"

"Mobius, as one professional to another, I think at this rate we're all going to be dead by sunrise tomorrow. No more experiments. No more science. This facility has turned into a living joke. Everything is falling apart due to one stray Communist spy with an intrusive therapy device. We're finished. The only thing we need now is a call from the Board of Directors of the Department of Defense saying that they're sending in a quality inspector and we're finished, forever."

The DoD telephone began ringing. Mobius' gigantic on-screen eyes locked onto it. Klein stared at it as if it were a giant scorpion, stinger raised and ready to strike.

The DoD telephone was a standard-issue rotary phone; archaic and out of place amongst the technological plethora of Big MT, looking like a mummy in an MRI scanner. Even in the year 2077 the US military only issued rotary phones as their official direct lines from important administrative offices to outside sources such as contractors like the Think Tank. They claimed that rotary phones were more secure. The truth was that in 1981 the DoD had been run by a technophobic retired general named Joffries. When he'd received his first cordless phone he was afraid of it and deferred to his old rotary. His cordless he let sit on the windowsill, unused and under direct sunlight workday after workday. When his secretary finally convinced him to try using the cordless due to the speedier dial time, Joffries had his ear singed badly when the damaged and overheated battery exploded as he was in the middle of a call. Convinced that cordless phones were easy targets of foreign sabotage he had all telephones in every department and institution related to the DoD switched to rotary as a measure of national security. As an accidental measure this also prevented DoD employees from dialing frivelous numbers such as pay-for-callback and phone sex lines on company payroll. For years the Big MT DoD line sat on a small table in one corner of the Dome. Klein had it disassembled and then embedded into his workstation at the console and only answered it every other time someone put a call through. Usually it was just for their seasonal inspection team announcing the date they planned to take their rounds. The rest of the time it was them rescheduling that date. Rarely was it an announcement that they were actually on their way to the facility. It was not rare enough, however, to ignore this time.

It had rung several times before Mobius spoke, "Pick it up."

"You pick it up! We're ruined if he sees the Dome in this pitiable state! The alarms are still going off! It's probably just them telling us the search is cancelled for Easter, or Christmas, or World War 3!"

"Pick it up, Klein! It may be a nuclear strike warning! We're blind as your average jazz pianist! With our sensors compromised we've got no way of telling when to put the Verbal Assault Turret into effect!"

"Turn the alarm off!"

"Impossible!"

"Turn it down, then!"

"The system isn't even accessible from here! Get the phone before we're nothing but ash, lint and gamma radiation!"

"Hello?"

The first thing Klein heard was a schlurping and crunching noise, like the sound effects in a cannibal horror film. Then a nervous voice, muffled by cheeks full of food, piped up,

"Big MT!" the man on the other line pronounced it 'Big Empty,' "Rod Baxter Jr here, DoD Secretary. Glad to hear from you. Big things going down! China's on the rise! Bad vibes. Real bad. Hey, got a minute? Because, to be honest, we're in a real tight spot here at the DoD and, if you don't mind me saying so, you're our only hope in the gosh-darned whole wide world there!"

"I'd be happy to disappoint you," Klein sneered.

"Good to hear it! Hey. Buddy. I'm sure you've got a lot of big things on your plate right now! Real big things. Nuclear-grade plutonium hot button issues. Yeah. Real hot stuff. Got this, y'know, CHINA fiasco hanging from the clothesline here and," the man chuckled while swallowing something, "If you ask me it ain't gonna dry by itself in this kind of climate. Real bad climate. Wet with the nervous sweat of Congress. Real bad vibes, like I said. Say, so, what's the haaaaps over there in egghead country, eh?"

"I will afford you ten seconds in which to explain to me why I'm not hanging up the phone, counting the amount of time it'll take me to finish this sentence that I am speaking right now. The sentence that I just finished. Also, that one. And this one too."

"Ha! Great joke buddy! Great joke. Look, I'm just the, ah, desk guy here. Trying to make some small talk makes me look good to the brass. So, mind if I patch you in? I've got a big shot on the phone. Real big shot. Hot shot big shot. Head of department! Here you go. Don't hang up, won't have to hold! Lunchtime! Lunchtime! Gotta go!"

After the clickity-clack of the line transfer a stern voiced man picked up,

"Hello? Is this Doctor Merriweather and associates?"

Klein ground his teeth together.

"No. No it is not 'Doctor Merriweather.' You have the priviledge of speaking to the head of research and idea-ology of the Think Tank of Big MT, Doctor Klein."

"Doctor Klein? Don't recognize the name. You must be an associate of Doctor Merriweather, then. Put me through to him."

"Excuse me? I'm _Doctor Klein._ I organize and run the research teams here. Every significant project under development by Big MT is a direct result of my fantastic and unrivaled researchmanship and ideasmithery."

"Great. You're the man I want to be talking to then, whoever you are. Inspection team's on their way. Couldn't reach you on encoded channels and had to use the rotary. They'll be there in an hour, give or take. What's that commotion in the background?"

"The microwave. Someone is using the microwave. Inspection team? We weren't scheduled for an inspection this season."

The man yawned,

"Tell it to the inspector. Seemed to think otherwise. Just needs to scope the Y-17 project. Expecting high demand for it in the near future. Trouble brewing in the big C so he wants to check your progress. Man enjoys a cup of coffee. Loud microwave you've got there. Might be overcooking your lunch."

"No, I- tell him to turn around. We're in the middle of a delicate exercise. Combat-related exercise. It would be monumentally dangerous for the inspector to show up right now. There's a very high chance of disintegration for anyone not properly shielded against gamma radiation. Hence the alarms. Call him off. Call him and tell him to turn around."

"Thought you said it was the microwave?"

"Yes. It's . . . a weapons-grade microwave. We're test-firing it in controlled cooking blasts. That's the blast warning going off. Is the inspector wearing proper saftey equipment for a gamma radiation saturated environment?"

"Cotton labcoat?"

"Instant death. In fact, as I look out of the window here I think one of our employees just made the mistake of walking outside without proper protection. Look at him burn! That didn't last long. What a horrible, senseless waste of manual labor and human life. He will be missed. We'll put him in an urn and build a shrine to workplace safety regulations."

"Can't call him off. No communications in his vehicle. Driving there in his own personal automobile. Just get him a suit with a fishbowl helmet or whatever you use to keep from dying over there, let him do his job and we'll make sure you receive funding for the next year if your work passes specifications. Called you last week to make sure you were ready for inspection. Think I left a message. You didn't get it?"

"You left a message on a rotary phone?"

"Yeah. Must have been some nano-glitch on your end or something then. No problem. Greet him at the gates."

"Disintegration-" Klein managed before the man hung up.

"Well," he said turning back to the main screen, "That's simple enough. We've already established that the inspector's disintegration is a certainty. We can send him back in a coffee tin and be done with it."

"I was tracking that conversation on my terminal. We won't be disintegrating anybody."

"He's going to take one look at this crater, turn around and report back that we're all incompetent nitwits. We're doomed unless we reduce him to something equal or less than ashes. You can't even begin to argue the morality of not murdering this man in cold blood."

"That isn't the primary issue at hand. The radar fence is. As soon as he tries to cross it his brain will switch off and we'll need to ferry him inside manually."

"Let him rot! Brainless! He's a liability! What if this spy gets a hold of him? Turns him into an agent?"

"I don't want him harmed, Klein! I want him to be present for when my Siesmoscorpion comes online! We're guaranteed a lifetime of contracts if he sees it in action! No, Klein, I won't have him disintegrated. Not him, not Beedle, not any of us. We're going to clean this crater up and let him in. We're going to have everything in order by the time he arrives. Get the team together and make sure of it. Without him we're not going to have any funding whatsoever, especially if he sees this mess we're in right now. Get the team organized, Klein! That's your job, after all. Isn't it?"

Mobius' broadcast cut to static and then became the blank wall of the dome again.

"Alone? Finally?"

Klein looked around the Dome. Nobody was in sight.

"Beedle? Beedle! Are you done filthying up the waste depository conveyance unit in the so-called 'room of resting?' Beedle? Hello? Foppish duncehead, fool of the ages?"

Absolute silence. Beedle had apparently gone off to the Sink, perhaps guided by Mobius or another. Klein, satisfied that he had finally achieved solitude, cackled to himself as he flipped a discreet switch on his terminal. The cloaked securitron which he'd had sitting in the corner of the room the entire time popped into view.

"At your command," it burped out.

"Shh! Ears everywhere," Klein whispered as he pulled a holotape out from another discreet part of his terminal, "Run this. Once it's done, vacate and resume duties."

"Affirmative."

"Excellent. This Dome and all of its new innovative security measures won't be the same once we're done here. Once I've left my mark on it. And them."


	9. Chapter 9

On top of the X-2 reciever dish 8 was fiddling with knobs. His Knobulater had a lot of them and even he didn't know what all of them did. He had it plugged in to the mainframe of the lab, sparks sparking to and fro from where he'd crosswired a connection. Why it was sparking he didn't know. The crater felt abnormally humid. Perhaps it would rain. These things barely crossed his mind due to how intently he was knob-twisting and listening for any possible holes in the broadcast saturation X-2 was suffering from. All he got was static, static, static. No outside signals were available except for that one incessant channel. Either it was a case of faulty signal decryption, a sabotaged input reciever, or a not-long-enough antenna. Try as he might he couldn't get the FM or AM radio stations around Las Vegas. There would be no "Ain't That A Kick In The Head" five times an hour, nor could he phreak the line this week for another guaranteed win on the weekly 8th caller Sunset Sarsaparilla Prize Pack. He had been the winner 194 weeks in a row, using a variety of modulated voices. Just last week he'd brought back an old favourite voice of his, Granny Bowen, who had won the Prize Pack ten times throughout three years. People loved it when a nice old lady won the prize and 8 loved supplying the facility with free crates of soda for Mentat mixers. Everybody wins. Instead all he could pick up on every official Big MT was some variation on the same familiar theme.

Flicking through the channels,

"-imply can't wait for the gala event. What a lovely villa. So economical! Hint of old-world charm, too. Reminds me so much of when I'd summer in Basque. Delightful. Ever tried Tapas? Little-"

Flick.

"-nice bottle, thanks. Can you believe the boss man? Almost two hundred years now since prohibition and we're still having to bootleg. In England we blue-collars still get to take a work break for what they call a 'pint' didja know? Bet the casino has bars. Might bribe Jorge at the switching station for a vendor code so I can get me som-"

Flick.

"-n't wait for the opening. I just DIE every time Dean gets on stage," murmering sounds, "I KNOW. Oh I'll let you in on the secret. You can't tell ANYBODY, okay? Well, for the Gala, me and some of the other gals have gotten a spare pair of our 'you-know-whats.' Quiet down! Quiet down or Steve'll hear you! Hush! Shh! We're going to take them . . . and tie our spare room key up in them . . and toss them up when he comes out! Oh, shoo! It'll be fun! Just imagine, what if he comes visiting? My husband's secretary told me that another girl told her that it happens in Vegas all the time. Why shouldn't we have any fun just because we're at the-"

Flick.

"-eathtrap. _Dios mio_, _es el infierno, _the casino. I no want nothing to do with it no more. _Mi hermanastro_, he say I can still get in the Vault _tres_ if I come next day, _puesta del sol._ You go down in the sewers? You see the pipes? _Ave María purísima,_ they red. Red with what? I d'no. Red with _la muerta._ E_s aliento del diablo._ I see the men come back from there. They dying, stuck in their suits 'cause the suits do nothing. Nobody can get them out. The suits; they like the tools of _la Espania_, _la inquisición._ No exit. The suit, it like they new skin. I tell you no lies, _senor._ I running tonight. No want the money. The boss man, Sinclair? He a fool. _Oveja que bala, bocado que pierde._ I telling y-"

Flick.

"-gin again . . . in the night . . . lets sway again tonight . . . your arm on my shoulder . . . your cheek against mine . . ."

8 flicked the switch one last time and it landed on a speaker playing the ambient hotel and casino music. Every speaker at the Sierra Madre had a bug in it by design. 8's design, in fact. Up until the nuclear scare he'd been keeping on-and-off tabs on the status of the experiment but had been sidetracked by sabotage, disaster and war. Frustrated with the loss of his Prize Pack he crawled to the lip of the dish to get a look at the half-flooded lanscape below. The middle valley of the crater was now a moat surrounding the dome. Water had flooded the entirety of it and continued to rise. Nightstalkers, unable to find living prey, splashed and swam in the water like a bathtub. 8 counted five . . . six . . . seven securitrons zipping about the crater. One was carrying something wrapped up in a sheet towards the Dome. Another stopped abruptly at the edge of the new moat and began tossing unidentifiable steaks to the Nightstalkers. Yet another was zipping up towards the Cuckoo's nest with a shovel and a lantern. The Constructotrons were hauling the remains of his laboratory up the sides of the dome, occasionally dropping a piece and having to go back down for it at he speed of iced molasses. Which one he'd remotely ordered to go rewire the alarm system to repeatedly blast wasn't in sight. He could identify it by the Atomi-Chew bubblegum he'd slapped onto its shoulder. It was nowhere in sight. He'd verbally run through its logic routines three times and, upon discovering that it had faulty memory, comissioned it for the covert task of subverting the entire facility's commlink system, known as the Comprehensive Communications Control Cipher. The CCCC was the crater's nervous system. Almost every device was plugged into it in some way on a macro, micro, and middlescopic level. Soon he'd have complete control of every transmission, no matter how encrypted, and be able to undermine whoever was behind the recent rash of embarassing disasters. He also wanted to know why Mobius was consistently pinging the Dome with extremely high frequency junk transmissions that, when unpacked, were nothing but Fancy Lads Cakes advertisements. It was as if Mobius were deliberately trying to get 8's attention, the sole researcher with the know-how and tech to intercept such transmissions. He'd considered asking Mobius outright but was hesitant to fall for what might be a trap were Mobius' brain comprimised by the stolen Brainwriter 6000 or whatever he'd called it. No, 8 would wait until he was the absolute master of Big MT's communications systems. Then he would be in a position to tell Mobius what was what. Beyond that, someone else was using the comm

"Status?" 8 hailed the securitron.

"99.9% complete," it replied, "Estimated: 27 seconds remaining. This update will require you to restart the commlink OS in order to take effect. Would you like to restart?"

"By Oxford's Neverending Bell, I _despise_ it when an OS requires a restart. So much for subtlety. Yes. Yes, of course. Restart."

"Affirmative. Restarting in 15 . . . 14 . . . 13 . . ."

Doctor 8 tweaked the Knobulator until he was keyed in on every doctor's direct input and began counting himself. As he watched, lights all over the crater connected to various antennae and panels began blinking rapidly, chaotically, rippling as everything connected by fiber optic communication cables powered down. The entire crater experienced a momentary blackout as the CCCC cut communications between the subterranean Heracles Atom-compactor Miracle Reactor and the facility itself. For several seconds all was quiet. The securitrons stopped their tossing and rolling and spinning and digging. The latent hum of thousands of machines silenced momentarily. The only sound in the crater was the playful splishing and splooshing of deadly snakeskinned paws in the pools below.

Then, all at once, the crater exploded back to life five times as loud as before. Every securitron literally rattled back to awareness. The Verbal Assault Turret ran its testing scheme by playing 'The Saints Go Marching In' loud enough to fling one of the Constructotrons clear of the radar fence. It flew for two full seconds before landing in a bouncing roll across the single road in and out of the facility. A black Corvega rolling down the road towards the site swerved to avoid it and subsequently rocketed out of control towards the radar fence smashing into one of the pylons and sending its occupant flying out of the front windshield to land in a crumple on the ground in a patch of Xander root plumes. As 8 just barely had time to register this suddenly a vibrant glow erupted from the other end of the crater. Doctor 0's missing laboratory had suddenly reappeared swathed in the eerie blue light of hologram technology. Suspended over the building was a menacing apparition: a gigantic koi fish with glowing red eyes.

"What in the name of Pythagoras-"

The Think Tank, their systems back online, didn't fail to live up to anyone's expectations by complaining endlessly.

"Power outages? Who is responsible for this? Doctor 0? I'm certain it's you. Who else could suddenly and majestically power down the entire facility without warning?" Klein roared.

"The LIGHTS! They are ON AGAIN. Now, I'm POLITELY warning whoever turned them off that if you so much as TOUCH the lights while I'm delicately measuring out portions of nightstalker blood by the vialful I will find SOME WAY to make sure your offspring are born with fewer than the REQUIRED NUMBER of ORGANS."

8 tweaked knobs and dials to check if his override had succeeded. His first target was Mobius' lab, which Defcon 5 had shut down all external access to, and the two-way intercom at the door to X-42.

"Hello! Oh, it's you Dala. Nice to hear from you again. Sorry to leave you out in the cold like this but I just can't have visitors right now. I just lost a good fifteen pages of very productive AI coding just because _someone_ thought it was a good idea to dis-empower the fiber optics around here. I suspect 8 may be responsible. He's the only one besides me who even knows that everything is connected via fiber optics! Oh, and you Dala, as of . . . now. I suppose. Drat, I thought I'd been into the Grape Mentats. Why do I even keep them around?"

"Only your roboscorpions can deal with Stripe, Klein. His horrible claws are between me and my only care in this rapidly declining world of ours. I only need one. Maybe five. Seven. I'll accept prototypes and factory rejects. There's too much at stake for me to care. I will compromise your front door if necessary."

"Sorry! Can't spare a one! Why don't you go ask the fish? There's this _fish_ floating above the crater that looks mighty dangerous. Since we know nothing about it, there's every chance that it will grant you three wishes or somesuch! Go ahead and try it out! Should be interesting!"

This drew 8's attention back to the fish. Through his binoculars he could see it hovering in the air. Its eyes were the same colour as one of the security holograms when they red-shifted to attack mode.

"Not a good sign," he murmured. He fiddled around a bit trying to see if there was any sort of signal being relayed from 0's lab to betray its purpose. After hitting several dead channels, all formerly dedicated to security bot reports, he tried the robotics lab's emergency broadcast frequency which had been dead since 0 disabled it after setting it off daily for months back in 2074.

"BEWARE, MORTALS. I AM THE WIND FISH OF OLD, THE AQUATIC GOD! DO NOT APPROACH MY WATERY DOMAIN. I WILL REDUCE YOU TO CRISP FLAKES AND FEED THEM TO MY TINY GOLDENSCALED MINIONS!"

"Hoo, that's something," 8 patched himself in to the rest of the Tank, "Hey guys. I think you need to hear this. 0's lab is broadcasting this now. I think it's for our ears."

"THIS USELESS, PATHETIC CRATER WILL TRANSFORM FROM THE BIG EMPTY INTO . . . WAIT FOR IT . . . BIG LAKE! THEN, MY WATERS WILL SPREAD BEYOND THE LIMITS OF ITS PUNY BOWL-SHAPE AND FLOOD THE DESERT. I WILL CHURN THE GROUNDWATERS OF THE MOJAVE INTO DEADLY FOAM. I WILL TURN THIS NATION INTO THE NEW OCEAN! DROWN BENEATH THE WAVES OF YOUR PETTY EXPERIMENTS! BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"JEFFY?" Borous said, "Is that . . . OH MY. I thought I'd DISPOSED of him down the toilet."

"TREMBLE, WORLD! TREMBLE AT THE FLAPPING OF MY TAIL! FEEL THE MIGHT OF MY HINDPARTS AS THEY WAVE MENACINGLY TO AND FRO, QUAKING THE VERY EARTH BENEATH YOUR FEET!"

The ground began to shake rhythmically as the magnetohydraulics system beneath the crater cranked into overtime. The water exploding from pipes feeding the moat doubled in ferocity.

"Reactor coolant reserves are rapidly depleting," Klein sneered, "At this rate the Heracles Reactor is going to overheat and erupt without our incredibly secret underground reservoir to maintain temperature levels. Borous, explain how you know this humanocidal maniac before we all die so that my component molecules can avoid mingling with yours as we float about in the irradiated breeze."

"Jeffy! You don't remember Jeffy? OF COURSE you don't! I covered up that entire embarassment and hoped to NEVER have to EXPLAIN IT. And here I am, forced to do so! THE FOLLY OF HUBRIS. Jeffy was what I like to call a GENE BUCKET. Spare helixes and chromosomes lying around that would normally go to WASTE and get MOLDY and so on, I put into Jeffy. Oh, it was PERFECT for a while. If I needed a spare genome I'd just grab Jeffy. It was a WONDERFUL way to save resources. Unfortunately, Jeffy stopped getting along with the other little fishies. JEFFY, for SOME REASON, wouldn't stop BULLYING them. It brought up BAD MEMORIES. After running some tests I discovered that using a single animal for all of your spare DNA is an IMPRESSIVELY BAD IDEA. The garbled mishmash of leftover JUNK CODE had turned him into the genetic equivalent of a TOTALITARIAN OVERLORD DICTATOR. A spare sample of ALPHA DOG gene combined with pieces of the BETA SUBORDINATE programming slapped over a junkyard of RANDOM NONSENSE that even I don't remember putting there had made him INSECURE, BOASTFUL and HATEFUL OF ALL LIFE. Especially ME. He had turned the entire aquarium into a PISCOFACIST STATE wherein all other sea creatues had to give a tithe of 67% of their fish flakes, with the possibility of even HIGHER TAXATION. He turned the coral castle from a playful land of FLIPPER FUN into a NIGHTMARE of SCALY TRIBUTE. Imagine: HOLE IN THE HEAD DISEASE for all DISSENTORS. It was a fish rights DISASTER. So, I had to do the responsible and humane thing: I FLUSHED HIM DOWN THE TOILET. Along with all of his party loyalists."

"Then how did he get control of an entire laboratory, Borous? Did he swim up the pipes and lodge himself inside of a Robobrain or what? I need answers, not disturbing anecdotes about your bathroom habits."

"If I knew that, I'd DISABLE HIM. We didn't even know Doctor 0's lab still EXISTED until Jeffy EXPOSED HIMSELF to us. If he has control of HOLOGRAM TECHNOLOGY we are all in for a VERY DANGEROUS EVENING."

"IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE YOU ARE FORCED TO FLAIL AND DOG-PADDLE IN THE MURDEROUS WATERS OF MY NEW DOMAIN. LAUGH, I SHALL! LAUGH AT YOU, WHOSE BIOLOGY IS PATHETICALLY INAPPROPRIATE FOR SWIMMING. JUST THINK: LAND MONKEYS, SLAPPING AT THE BLACK WAVES OF MY NEW WORLD ORDER WITH THE SIEVE-LIKE TERMINUS OF THEIR APPENDAGES! AS YOU DROWN MY FIN-ATICAL FOLLOWERS WILL SLOWLY AND TICKLISHLY STRIP THE MEAT FROM YOUR INFLEXIBLE PRIMATE BONES!"

Perhaps as a show of force the holographic projection of Jeffy flared its eyes up and fired. The beams slashed across the landscape leaving a black scar before landing on a fleeing securitron which promptly blew up sending parts flying everywhere. The rest of the securitrons in the region immediately scattered from the area as the giant red fish eyes began blasting at random, scarring the earth black with little smoking craters and pits.

"Reason with him, Borous!"

"It would be like asking GREGOR MENDEL to appeal to a 14th century POPE for funding in PEA-POD RNA. Hilarious, DEADLY and pointless."

The beams were now simply concentrated on the moat of water, frothing it into foam.

"FILTHY HOUNDSNAKES INFECTING MY BEAUTIFUL WATER! I WILL BOIL YOU OUT!"

"Can anyone, ANYONE do something about this fish besides make excuses and moan? Are we not scientists? How did this fish get a hold of hologram technology anyway? Who was watching Lightwave Dynamics Research? Oh, let me guess: our absent security team! Why am I the opposite of surprised?"

The body of the man whose car had been interrupted by the radar fence was being ferried towards the Y-17 Medical Facility by the securitron 8 had appropriated for his task. Strange, since he'd ordered it to return to him immediately and without delay after it was done with its work in the fiber optic tunnels.

"Anyone . . . order pizza?" 8 asked.

"PIZZA?" Borous said, "NO. UNFORTUNATELY NOT. Not a BAD IDEA, though. Not a bad idea AT ALL. Did one arrive? Is the pizza in danger of disintegration? That would be UNACCEPTABLE and NOT DELICIOUS."

"Car crashed into the radar fence. Doesn't look like a pizza delivery boy. Pizza boys don't drive shiny black Corvegas, do they?"

"Oh, him?" Klein said, "He's arrived? Don't tell me he's seen the crater! The radar fence must have deactivated his brain."

"Who IS he?"

"Some biological speakerbox sent from the Department of Defense to hover and loom over our shoulders, making us uncomfortably distracted as we try desperately to accomplish something."

8 winced at the hole in the windshield he'd made upon exit.

"The radar fence very well may have deactivated his brain, although I think the ground he landed on as he violently spat out of the vehicle was more responsible."

"What? Is he dead? Please tell me he's at least terminal."

"No clue. A securitron has already hauled him off to Y-17. It's up to the Auto-Docs now."

"_Brilliant._ The whole reason he came here was to get a look at Y-17. Well, how do you like the inside scoop, mister Inspector?"

"KNEEL, AND BE JUDGED BY MY BOILING SEAS OF STEAMING MISERY! IT IS THE CAULDRON OF YOUR DOOM I AM PREPARING!"

The water was beginning to bubble now. The Nightstalkers had already fled from it off towards the Hexacrete Archipelago.

"We really need to do something about this fish."

"Ideas? Ha. I'll give you ideas: a frying pan. Get me one, a hot plate and a stick of butter or believable butter substitute and I'll make it sizzle. I mean, once we penetrate past its radius of certain laser-based death of course. That I'll leave up to you gentlemen. Get on it! I'll go double check the kitchen for the execution tools while you're on-getting."

"I've managed to get some limited access behind the Defcon systems, Klein. Looks like the Lightwave Dynamics Lab's systems were compromised some hours ago without our notice. An emittor was stolen from the facility. No, strike that: an emittor _bank_. Someone managed to orchestrage a composite hologram. That thing is about five or six holo-emittors strong. They need to be desynchronized in order for it to lose its capability to kill us horribly. That is, if we were the sort to even get near the lab in the first place. I'm not going over there. That thing might have guardbots."

"NEITHER am I interested in being reduced to LESS THAN FLESH. If I recall correctly JEFFY was always a bit of a show-off. Perhaps we can use his EGO against him. SOMEHOW. WITH SCIENCE."

"I'd rather fry his systems and then fry him. Surely we have an EMP device around that could short that whole lab out. It's not like 0 knows how to properly shield anything. He can barely tie his shoes. I'll bet this fish has him captive in the basement shaking flakes into its tank."

8 kept at it with his Knobulator, knobbing around the CCCC checking every comm node attached to the hologram system for a weak point to exploit. Every emittor was directly linked into the strained Heracles Reactor except for their diagnostic systems, which made cutting off their power impossible without powering down the reactor itself and ending a decades-lasting fusion chain that would take whole days to re-ignite. It would damn too many systems and leave them defenseless for the impending nuclear strike.

"Power grid's not an option. Looks like the fish has wired itself directly into Heracles," 8 said.

"Cant Borous get one of his canine abominations to go chew on some power cables?"

"Not unless they're nimble enough to nip past its lasertronic eyebeams. Borous? Any canine capable of avoiding detection?"

"NOT that I can think of. Even a NIGHTSTALKER isn't fast enough to not get REDUCED TO ASHES by a five-to-six holotech emittor COMPOSITE. That is if I know my HOLOTECH, and I DON'T. MOBIUS KNOWS. He DEVELOPED it from the GROUND UP."

"Nonsense," Klein said, "It was a joint effort. Mobius designed the emittors, tuned them to the proper lightwave frequences, programmed their pitiably simple patrol firmware and came up with basic designs for their appearances. I, Doctor Klein, dissimenated the necessary microtasks to various subordinates in order to glue the whole thing together and then got that talking head Sinclair to believe it was all in his best interest instead of ours. Who would you call the real mastermind behind its success? Don't even respond. I know the truth. And, to answer your question . . . what was the question?"

8 kept scanning the systems looking for exploits. 0's lab had an unfamiliar off-grid system connected to his lab that wasn't there the morning before, unrelated to any other security systems existing prior. The only reason 8 knew it was there at all was that it hadn't been shielded. The fiber optics were still easily detectible with plebian photodecay sensors. Possibly Mobius' doing but likely not. Mobius had expressed no familiarity with the disappearance of 0's lab. Something was in place there beyond just the howling violent spectre of a mad fish god.

"THE WATER LEVELS RISE, AND RISE EVEN HIGHER BEYOND THAT! FEAST YOUR EYES, FUTURE GENERATIONS OF FISH KINGS, UPON THE RUIN THAT THE PEURILE POST-AQUATIC SUBPISCIANS HAVE BROUGHT UNTO THEMSELVES!"

"Doesn't this fish have a killswitch like the cazadors?" 8 asked.

"Aside from applying WEAPONRY to it? NONE WHATSOEVER. Why would I need to code a FAILSAFE into my TRASH CAN? How DANGEROUS can trash be? The answer HANGS BEFORE US, like the weight of OUR PRIDE having broken the FISHING LINE of SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS."

"Then there's no other choice. We'll have to directly intervene."

"What, with our . . . bodies? You want us to shoot at it with crude weaponry? Swing our fists at its lethal spectrogram with our fingers wrapped tight in a ball like the hand of a . . . a monkey relieving its reproductive fluids?"

"I WON'T HAVE IT," Borous shouted, "It won't be HAD on MY WATCH. And I AM watching. I have some limited mechanical eye control from my auxilliary workstation here in X-8 and I can see nothing indicating the success of an IN PERSON infiltration. Besides, do any of you know how to SHOOT? As in, SHOOT GUNS? Even a LASER ACCELERATION PISTOL?"

There was an awkward silence. 8 took the opportunity to double-check on Dala and Mobius who had apparently ceased negotiations. Dala's personal communications device wasn't on, and the X-42 facility was wired with too many systems to be able to quickly check his status.

"Eh . . . what's this music?" Klein asked, "I'm checking our communications channels and I keep getting some kind of rhythm-based broadcast. Sounds like something they'd play in a cable-driven lift to soothe the Wall Street mannequins into ignoring the fact that office architecture and internal design has been modeled after rat maze experiments since the end of the second World War."

"That's the full series of Sierra Madre speaker broadcasts. Someone's been jamming outside communications with it, although I can't tell if it was inentional or not. I'd been monitoring and logging the progress of that whole, ah, 'thing' over the past few months but had to set it down due to . . . well, today actually."

"How IS that progressing?"

"Well, the toxin appears to be-"

"A TITHE OF ONE LIMB PER PRIMATE SHOULD DO FOR STARTERS! ALL WILL RELINQUISH THEIR PETTY TREE-CLIMBING APPERATUSES! WHEN WE HAVE SURGICALLY REPURPOSED YOU FOR SWIMMING IN THE DELUVIAN MAJESTY OF MY NEW KINGDOM YOUR TORMENT WILL BE INCREASED THIRTY-FOUR FOLD! NIBBLING! NIBBLING WILL ENSUE!"

"We really need to do something about him."

"Send the securitrons in!"

"They'll explode!"

"SEND IN GABE," Borous declared triumphantly, "GABE is INVISIBLE. The fish CANNOT HOPE TO DETECT HIM. Fish, as you may well know, LACK NOSES AND EARS. HE can bite the wires that bind its SCALY EVIL to this world. Gabe is our ONLY HOPE."

8 checked the crater with his binoculars. Some fifty meters from the laboratory Gabe appeared to be napping in a pile of Cram, breathing in and out slowly. His eyes were shut and his paws seemed to be twitching intermittently.

"Gabe's locked into a hypnagogic Cram overdose. He won't be going anywhere unless he's woken up and digests all of that processed meat. Could take hours. Nay, superhours. Hours longer than hours."

"RESCUSCITATION. Get him to Y-17 and have him DECRAMULATED while we come up with a plan."

8 sent a remote order to one of the securitrons to do so. Hesistantly, taking great care to give the huge hateful fish a wide berth, it fetched Gabe who belched and sleepwoofed all the way to the facility.

"In the meantime I'll try and see if there's any systems I can exploit. Checking . . . hmm, Doctor 0's lab still has a few overlooked vulnerable inputs. Looks like the ventilation system is still routed through some of X-17's air filtration and control computing. Might be able to exploit that."

"What, gas him? We have some spare gases around in tanks. Mostly unlabeled."

"Fish do not BREATHE."

"Borous is right. It would just put Doctor 0's life at risk, if he's still alive at all and not being turned into chum. Wait a second . . . didn't 0 say something about having a fish earlier? When he was caught in Z-14?"

"I DO recall that. I didn't take any note of it at the TIME, of course. Doctor 0 says a LOT of things, 95% of which is FILLER."

"Where'd he get Jeffy from, you think? Where would Jeffy have been living all of this time? Maybe we can isolate if he's been contaminated with any exploitable chemicals."

"NOT CERTAIN. Perhaps a routine check on the sewage disposal system would tell us WHERE HE's BEEN. Lets see, my toilet pipe runs parallel to the main waste disposal line . . ."

Dala suddenly patched through on the intercom,

"My Adonis. It's gone. It's missing from my personal laboratory. I will dismantle this facility down to the naked, exposed rebar reinforcements within its concrete until I find it."

"Not now Dala," Klein said, "We're trying to exterminate an omnicidal goldfish. Your statue can wait until we're not at risk of drowning in boiling water."

"Klein. In having spoken first in dismissal I will assume you are the one responsible. I will be coming to the dome to find my work. Do not attempt to delay or inhibit my investigations. I will take drastic measures to ensure that I find what is missing."

"Dala-"

"She's cut her line. Klein, are you alone in the Dome? She sounds . . . mad."

"Bah! Dala, inflicting harm upon me, her supervisor? Not thinkable. I've got measures in place just in case she has a momentary lapse of reason, however."

"AH! THERE we are. It is entirely likely that Jeffy could have been separated at the waste processing tanks and diverted to the steaming green . . . ah, THAT MAKES EFFORTLESS SENSE. Dwelling within the FETID, IRRADIATED POOLS at the Hazmat Testing Grounds must have been what driven his psychotic AMBITION to becoming a holographic AVATAR OF DESTRUCTION. He's probably so LOADED with heavy metals, mindwarping decayed toxins and unnamed new isotopes that he's more SLUDGE THAN FISH INSIDE."

8's Knobulator began beeping. His hired securitron had finished with depositing Gabe in Y-17 and was standing by for further orders. He quickly keyed in a run to the Innovative Toxins Lab to fetch the requisition forms and logs of the last few months of poisonous materials.

"Having a look into what could neutralize him. I'm sure we'll come up with something that can pacify a chemically deranged and genetically botched terrorfish. I'm going to stay up in this, uh, dish here. Keep watch over everything. Borous? Are you prepared to manage Gabe's insertion once he's ready for action?"

"ALWAYS. This will be a REMARKABLE chance for me to test my new GABECHOW formula once he's up and ready for DIN-DINS."

"I'll be here waiting for Dala to come murder me," Klein sighed, "Yes, I'd like to see her try. Likely she's been reprogrammed for assassination under dubious pretences of 'missing sculptures.' Let her come. Perhaps my new security measures will knock some sense into her brainwashed head, as unfortunate as it is that things have come to this. Colleague assaulting colleague? It's like I'm really working at MIT."

"Signing off for the moment," 8 said as he began fiddling his machine to scan Mobius' systems, "Time to formulate a plan of attack."

Once he was by himself 8 began running through the X-42 observation and listening devices searching for some insight as to what Mobius was actually working on in there, but he was nowhere to be found. Instead he found a feed of a hidden assembly line churning out roboscorpion after roboscorpion, adding one after the next to a stock of what looked like thousands upon thousands, far more than Mobius had let on. Instead of a personal security force, Mobius appeared to be stocking up an army of them, with a scorpion that appeared to be nearly as large as the dome at the center of them still being buffed and painted.

"Mobius said he'd only constructed three, maybe four actual functioning scorpions," 8 muttered to himself, "What I'm seeing here could take over Nevada. Why would he keep that information from us? Suspicions of a spy having infiltrated Big MT only came up today. These numbers must have been piling up for months."

8 fiddled his way through the factory, trying to find logs or records. Eventually he was able to access a manifest terminal, albeit secure. It looked to be the X-42 master datastore.

"Here we go, lets just sneak around the password . . ."

Within seconds the terminal had locked him out.

"Well! Looks like we've got an unauthorized access attempt," Mobius' cheerful voice rasped from the Knobulator speaker, "X-42 security systems are now dispatching a roboscorpion infiltrator interception team to the source of the cracking attempt. D'oh, you'll get it now you tricksy Benedict Arnold!"

8 juggled his device for a moment in panic before getting a hold of it and patching through to Klein,

"I, uh, I'll be, um, indisposed for a short while! Something's come up! Maintain radio silence!"

And then he bolted, pausing only to rip his Knobulater out of the receiver jack, for the escape hatch down to the auxilliary exit.

"YOUR PRIMATE LUNGS WILL MOAN IN SUFFERING HORROR, AND WHAT WILL I RESPOND WITH? WATER! ALL-CONSUMING WATER!" the fish boomed as 8 retreated out of the facility towards the Cuckoo's nest, "GILLS CANNOT UTTER WEAK PITIABLE CRIES! UNDENIABLE PROOF OF YOUR BIOLOGICAL SHORTCOMINGS! DROWN! BOIL! DIE!"


	10. Chapter 10

"GABE. Are you AWAKE YET, Gabe? ONE bark for yes, NO BARKS for NO."

In the ensuing silence Borous took the time to input the splice code for another military-grade robodog. Already he had a whole kennel full of them yipping, yapping and sniffing at each others' exhaust ports, but the more they had the more effective the assault would be. In teams of five he had to send them out to Y-17 to receive conductive dampening around their mouthparts. As soon as the five returned he would send more.

"GABE. Please respond. OUR FUTURE depends on it. In case you don't recall, Gabe, we're in the clutches of a foe even more HEINOUS than those locked away in the deepest dungeons of my brain. WE NEED you. The FACILITY needs your WOOFING MIGHT. I have assembled a team of LOYAL HOUNDS to assist in your mission."

"mrrrrrwwwrrrrrrrooooFFF. HUFF. OOF WOOF. WOOF!"

Gabe's tired panting and snorffling followed.

"YES. YES, Gabe. GOOD GABE. I've left a SNACK for you in the main room. You've GOT to be starving after that decramulation. It's got EVERYTHING YOU NEED to get you in FIGHTING CONDITION. Protien! Carbohydrates! Military-grade weaponized stimulants! You'll feel at your best and most DANGEROUS with this power-packed chow. GET THE TASTY, boy. Shake off that MED-X FUNK and go get to snacking."

He listened intently as Gabe dragged himself out of the Auto-Doc, plopping to the floor with a smack-clunk. His groggy whines ensued for a little while.

"POOR BOY. They must have dosed you up INTENSELY for that decramulatory operation. THOSE ARE THE DANGERS of gluttony. Every researcher of genetic interference learns THOSE DANGERS. Usually in high school. Oh, you think it's a GRAND IDEA to make STEAK-DINNER FLAVOURED APPLES. When you're so bloated with apple that you can't MOVE and you're eating the POISONOUS SEEDS because they taste the most like SWEET MUSHROOM GRAVY. Then, you try it out on your WORST ENEMIES, but no! Their claims of eating steak-flavoured apples just get them detention for suspicion of PSYCHOTROPICS use. NOT AS SATISFYING."

"Are we ready yet?" Klein's voice on the intercom, "Time is of the essence."

"Aren't you in danger of being murdered, Klein?" 8 asked, "I thought I saw Dala just a minute ago through my binoculars at the front entrance. She was holding a cosmic knife and it looked like she meant business. Deadly business."

"I'm perfectly safe, what are you insinuating? That I can't protect myself from something so banal as murder by laceration? She'll never be able to get in the Think Tank. I've got it locked down tighter than the singularity point of a primordial black hole. Nothing's getting in here. And the Plebeiantologist is in the attic chattering with household appliances, I think. An acceptable place for him to be boring in until we can figure out some new method of putting him into harm's way."

"Why aren't we sending him in rather than Gabe, again? Isn't this a golden opportunity to watch him be molecularized?"

"Mobius' insistence upon his well-being has convinced me that it'll have to truly look like an accident. As much as I'd like him to have the grand tour of the genocidal fish it'd get Mobius all flustered and upset and complain-y. Only thing worse than having Mobius around is having him actively never around, mopey, locked up in X-42 developing new security measures and projects without my guidance and oversight. That's how that whole Y-0 thing truly happened, and don't let him tell you any different. Mobius was sad due to having his conscience violated because I wasn't _being ethical_ or some hogwash and got careless. Pah! Feelings. There's no room for such endochrinal spurtings in the pursuit of progress."

"EVERYONE! Gabe is AWAKE AND ALERT."

"BrrrrOOOF! WOOF WOOF!"

Gabe's snacking noises ensued. The more he snacked, the more vigorous his barking got. The more vigorous his barking got, the more evident it was that the chems in his bowl were doing the trick. Soon he was snarling, growling and woofing like it was the beginning of a war.

"GOOD DOG, Gabe. GOOD. You're a drug-addled TERROR of Science!"

"Had to recloate by the way," 8 said, "This crater is getting more and more dangerous by the minute. I don't have quite as much control from where I am now but it's better than nothing. Still can get us all surveillance access to Doctor 0's lab. Get whatever spare monitors on your stations turned on and tuned to . . . emergency surveillance channel Epsilon."

"Without DELAY," Borous said as he tuned his workstation to display the correct feed.

"All right. Which button does the . . . monitor . . . things. This one? Ah, yes. No. Not that one. That's the air-conditioning. Ah, here we are. Cleverly labeled 'Monitor things' as I'd expected. Alpha, beta . . . yes, yes. Epsilon? Epsilon! Ah, that's the lab right there, fish and all."

"Both of you have video feed? Borous, didn't Mobius dismantle the X-8 remote access terminal?"

"HE DID. He split it up into DIFFERENT ROBOTS. What he didn't count on, of course, was the fact that having it converted to roving robot form was EXACTLY what I needed to begin splicing more MILITARY-GRADE CYBERDOGS. I'm currently operating off of no less than FOUR loyal Cyberdogs. The controls may be a bit FURRY and SALIVA-COVERED at times, and my ability to fully monitor the situation may be compromised by the occasional trip to the BACKYARD, but I'm still operating at 89% efficiency. My consoles are PACKED FULL OF TREATS and highly functional. NOW. LET US ASSESS."

The walking eyes showed that the lab itself was sheathed in a thin layer of holotech lightwaves. The two entrances were sheathed in it. Spattered in a halo around the lab was a corona of Cram bits. Jeffy's avatar hovered with menace, occasionally glancing in one directon or another before spinning around to face the other way. His shouts were constant and repetitive: the researchers had adjusted their instruments to accept his broadcasts on a single frequency which they'd all turned down in order to discuss the matter uninterrupted.

"Hrrrmph. Yes. Very . . . tricky. I propose . . . that . . . we listen to 8's plan," Klein said.

"My plan?"

"Yes, your plan. The one you're about to inform us of. The plan for penetrating these troublesome defences and disabling the fish once and for all."

"I don't have a plan. I figured that you'd have a plan. You're the ideaologist."

"Hmmmm. Y-yes. Very . . . much so. Borous! Tell us the plan that I told you earlier, but put it into your own words. I want to hear _your_ version. Different perspectives. Yes."

"I was NOT told of a plan. As far as I know, the PLAN was to PENETRATE JEFFY's horrible FISH FORTRESS and NEUTRALIZE HIM with a MINIMUM of harm to Doctor 0, assuming there still IS a Doctor 0."

"Right! So, tell us: how were we planning to, ah, go about it?"

"I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA. I wasn't focused on ANYTHING but building up a reserve of military CYBERDOGS and getting GABE fighting fit. I left the details of attack vectors and general logicstics up to YOU, Klein."

"Typical. Absolutely typical. Do I have to do everything myself around here? Looks like it. Fine, since it's come to this I'll have to put my Plan C into action."

"But what about plan A?"

"Already exhausted. Plan A was going forth with your plan, and beyond that was plan B. Which, by the way, is also in shambles since it consisted of going forth with Borous' plan. In the absence of either of those plans I'd kept plan C as a failsafe."

"Well, okay then. Give us plan C."

"Fine. I will, since I'm forced to show my hand at this injunction. Plan C it is. Yes."

Borous looked over the small sea of panting and whirring Cyberdogs looking for any remaining splicing subejcts. There were none, so he began tallying up the numbers on his forces.

"Well?" asked Doctor 8.

"Well what?"

"Plan C!"

"Okay! Very well! Plan C! Oh, for the love of . . . I can't believe I'm forced to resort to Plan C."

"Klein, we have VERY LITTLE TIME LEFT before Big MT becomes the next CRATER LAKE. I've seen the first Crater Lake: it's a TOURIST TRAP. I recall us DISCUSSING the finer points of tourism EARLIER TODAY."

"I understand that, Borous. Plan C it is."

Borous counted thirty-two Cyberdogs. It wasn't an army but it was more than nothing. Four of them had to remain behind as dedicated terminals. Keeping a steady watered-down stream of Med-X pumping through them along with piles of electric blankets ensured that they wanted to do nothing but sit and nap while the spare electronics he'd assembled for a workspace took advantage of their robotic subsystems and compatible input boards.

"Klein, we'll need to be informed of the details of Plan C if we're going to crack into the lab."

"If that's the case, it's already failed so I don't see the point in continuing with it. Another plan, ruined. Plan C was an attempt to cloud the fact that there was no particular backup plan in store were plan A or B to fail. Good work, 8. Now we're completely without a plan."

"Blast!"

"Except for plan D, of course."

"EXCELLENT TIMING," Borous said, "With the failure of plan C I was concerned we might be truly ALL OUT OF PLAN. INFORM US, Klein."

"Plan D, yes. Plan D. I've been working on plan D for . . . almost a quarter of a minute now. It's still a rough plan, mind you. The doors on the facility, are they pressure sensitive?"

"Like all lab doors."

"Then, once the holotech barrier is weak enough there'll be no issues with Gabe entering the lab. I assume the Stealth Boy radiation fluid is still coursing through his veins rendering him more light-resistant than usual?"

"It has worn off SLIGHTLY, but YES. He is a GHOST of a dog."

"Then the way is clear: we need to adjust the streams of the hologram field away from one of the entrances. Gabe presses his cold, sticky wet nose to the pressure plate and enters. Then he only need navigate past whatever as-of-yet unknown internal security measures, find the correct wires feeding power to the emittors and gnaw on them incessantly until there's no more fish overlord. Then we'll just stroll in, butter a pan and fry him until he's tasty with a side of wild rice. Doesn't a Stealth Boy field bend light? He should be able to just walk right through the holofield."

"Logically? YES. Practically? NOT QUITE. A weaponized holofield, given my rudimentary understanding of it, is somehow composed of a weak remotely-projected BIOELECTRICAL BARRIER upon which the hologram particle wavelengths ride, like welcome FLEAS. Moving organic beings cannot penetrate it."

"Borous, you must have misunderstood the basic principles of holotech," 8 said, "Because that's . . . impossible. First of all, remote-projection forcefields are massively unstable. Secondly, there's no such thing as a bioelectrical barrier. How could the hologram field distinguish between bioelectricity and . . . electricity?"

"ASK MOBIUS."

"I can't. He's disappeared from his lab for the time being."

"Then it will remain an ANNOYINGLY NONSENSICAL MYSTERY."

"So," Klein interjected, "We don't know the nature of holotech's substantiality, eh? Mobius have his information monopoly on that too? Typical in how typical this kind of behaviour is of him. Unimportant: we'll penetrate the lab by force and guile alone. What's our usual way of disabling force fields?"

"Why, I've got the solution for that. The Sonic Emitter was having serious issues with causing extreme warp modulation to force field systems during testing. Totally fries most of them, so, it might work on a composite holotech force sheath. I don't think it'll do much to the hologram itself but it might create an instability in the field big enough to permit a dog to muscle through. Won't be comfortable for Gabe but it's our only shot."

"Excellent!" declared Klein, "Then Plan D is complete, short of a distraction to occupy Jeffy's laserbeam gaze of murder."

"UNDERWAY. These new Military-grade Cyberdogs won't be able to resist the scent of CRAM on the air once the door to X-8 has been opened and their hyperactivity countdown ends. Their FEEDING FRENZY will draw Jeffy's fire long enough for Gabe to sneak through the door. Although it HURTS ME to know I'm sending good dog soldiers into the line of fire, I trust that Gabe will work QUICKLY ENOUGH to minimalize casualties. I've turned off any desire of his to eat any manner of food, temporarily of course. No! That's a bad X-8 console! Do NOT attempt to copulate with OTHER PARTS OF THE CONSOLE!"

"Excellent," 8 said, "Now, we just need someone to fire the Sonic Emitter at the holofield and weaken its integrity at one of the doors."

"Simple! I assume the range on the Emitter is sufficent to fire it from the Dome roof?"

"I . . . well. No. It has an effective range of about ten yards."

The three of them sat in silence, considering this.

"Meaning we'd need to . . . go outside? Into the CRATER? Where there's THINGS?"

"Isn't there a less direct way of weakening force fields? Some code or password or . . . or centerfuge-based long distance plasma barrage? Why don't we just get a securitron to do it? There's plenty out there. Why, there's one now hiding behind a rock! It isn't even doing anything useful!"

"Incompatible manipulators."

"Ah."

Another long silence.

"I'm not going out there."

"Neither am I."

"NOT A CHANCE."

"I'm sure that Doctor 0 isn't busy with anyth- oh yes, right. We're infiltrating his lab. Hmm. Oh, of _course_. Is Dala still skulking about trying to get inside here and perform unsuccessful surgery on me? Ah, yes. There she is. Oh, clever! She's melting through the door with a superheated cosmic knife. Halfway done, eh? 8, can you have the Emitter delivered to her with the message that Doctor 0 has stolen her precious statue thing and that the only way we'll be able to get in and get it back is to have her blast one of the doors with the thing? She might buy it. It'll get us access and I won't have to take any extra efforts to avoid being murdered."

"TWO CALLUSES with ONE PLASMID."

"Yeah. No problem. It's being delivered as we speak."

While they waited Borous rallied up the Cyberdogs into a circular huddle around the exit to X-8. He went around adjusting their various settings: hyperactivity thresholds cranked to the maximum, pack-order and alpha heirarchy recognition deactivated. They'd run wild, floppy and disoraganized with erratic movements and no unit cohesion. Targeting them wouldn't be simple for a fish whose instincts were based on operating within the group-based movements of unified schools. Then he set about hooking up the command dampening time-locked protocol. Once they were free from the lab there'd be a buffer countdown of fourty-five seconds for them to start going mad with puppy-like glee. Fourty-five seconds was enough to get them to the rendez-vous point: the Cram zone around the fish-dominated lab. Then they would be leaping about wagging their tails and sliding across the grease-soaked earth, near-impossible to predict.

"Hey Borous, Dala's getting the Emitter. Patching you in."

Once again the noises from the crater, including the fish repeating his maniacal gloating off in the distance, could be heard through the securitron's ambient microphone input.

"Doctor 0 has stolen my Adonis?" Dala was saying.

"Correct, ma'am. According to my sources, Doctor 0 is in possession of the object in question."

"What sources?"

"My corrupted data stores are unable to log my sources of information, ma'am."

"Of course. Silly me. Here I am, so distracted by the loss of that which is most infinitely precious to me . . . and, er to science, more importantly. I've forgotten that you're incapable of remembering. What would Doctor 0 possibly want with my Adonis?"

"I am incapable of calculating the worth of this object to another member of the facility, ma'am."

"Of course you are. The worth of my Adonis cannot be calculated in mere coinage. It cannot even be calculated in terms of sentimentality. It is an impossibly incalculably valuelessly valueable object representing the absolute balance of all human qualities."

Klein's voice popped in as a whisper over the channel,

"I told you all, didn't I? This 'formological project.' It's secretly an arts and humanities project."

"NOW NOW," Borous said, "No need to go SAYING THINGS we can't take back if she were to OVERHEAR them."

"Klein? Borous? Why are you speaking quietly in the background of this securitron's voice modulator?"

Doctor 8 sighed, "The signal was 2 way. I thought you'd passed basic telecommunications, the both of you?"

"Blast it all! Well, there goes Plan D, down the toilet like an omnicidal fish."

"DALA. You must understand: we didn't actually say ANYTHING relevant about any alleged ARTS AND HUMANITIES projects. We were simply MUSING on how HORRIBLE the arts and humanities are by comparison with the BEAUTIFUL SCIENCE you perform daily in your laboratory and workshop. The science . . . OF BEAUTY, in fact! It's very scientific, I AM CERTAIN."

"Why are you eavesdropping on me through a securitron? 8? You too? Spying, when we already have a spy on our hands?"

"In all honesty we're just trying to help. Doctor 0 has your project in his lab along with . . . things. Things we need. Plus, that fish on top of it is going to kill us all if we don't hurry up."

"So, Doctor Klein does _not _in fact possess my Adonis in any way, shape or form."

Klein *pfah'd* through the microphone, "Please. If I wanted to steal someone's project for myself it wouldn't be a statue. It'd be something with much brighter lights and more impressive mechanical parts. Something like a roboscorpion army or a . . . a military-grade microwave beam emitter-slash-cooking device. Note to self: military-grade kitchen appliances. Yes."

"Everyone, everyone. The way is utterly clear," 8 declared, "Dala is the only one of us outdoors enough to administer the sonic emitter blast that will allow Gabe to ram his way through the field of utterly improbable and theoretically impossible force to open the door to Doctor 0's mysteriously heavily fortified laboratory in order to thwart the diabolical plans of Borous' estranged pet fish while surrounded by prancing and frolicking dogs."

Said Cyberdogs were getting restless. Borous' attempts to distract them with squeaky toys were rapidly decaying.

"WE MUST MOVE QUICKLY. The dogs want WALKIES, and they want them IMMEDIATELY. If we don't take action they might start to frolic in the safety of X-8 and Dala will be . . . uh . . . INCONVENIENCED MILDLY by the lack of DECOYS distracting away Jeffy's beams of horrible dea- er, UNKINDNESS."

"Is that fish yours, Borous? His rantings have been giving me aches and pains in my branial area."

"He is merely a speck in the majestic opera of GENETIC MANIPULATION. A speck that has COMMAND of deadly hologram technology, but still a SPECK. Oh, wouldn't he be MAD if he heard that? This signal isn't broadcasting beyond these secure frequencies, is it?"

8 clicked his tongue, "Shouldn't be."

"A SPECK! Dala, you'll have the protection of my loyal Cyberdogs. Yes, the fish MAY have the command of some MILDLY THREATENING death rays from its NOT AT ALL DANGEROUS eyes, but as long as you move quickly no SERIOUS harm should come to you."

"My Adonis is in danger. He is captive, screaming for release. I do not fear death, gentlemen. I fear the loss of progress. I fear the death of innovation. I fear the death of our natural and needful instincts to explore the natural world and expose all of its secrets and wonders to the open air. Besides, we have an experimental matter recombinator somewhere in Y-17 that recombinated the ash of a few test rats and they came back mostly functional. Perhaps head-bumpy and uncoordinated, but alive."

Everyone settled into their postions and prepared themselves for what Klein began calling "Operation: Second Flush." Borous led the dogs with pack of heavily-scented buffout-laced milk bone treats to the front exit and waited for the word to release them.

"So, I fire this . . . emitter at the door? That will permit entry into the lab?" Dala asked.

"Yes, but not for long. Just barely enough for Gabe to force his way through what I'd call an 'localized uncertainty event' in the holofield. It won't fry the field itself. It'll just create a thinness of sorts. You've just got to aim, fire and then I'd suggest hugging the outer wall of the facility. Fish can't see you there, what with floating just above it and all."

"Enough! We're short on time, statues and backup plans as we dally with these details. Emitterate the holothing so that Gabe can dogify the light-carrying electrotubes!"

"Ready, Borous?" 8 asked.

"PREPARED."

"Release the hounds!"

Borous released them. They did not stampede out of the door. In fact, they stood panting right in place at the threshold of the barrier.

"HOUNDS! Release yourselves AT ONCE!" he shouted. They looked up at him, heads cocked, walking in circles. They had absolutely no incentive to rush out and activate their hyperactivity countdown. Instead they just stared at his bag of tasty treats.

"GO! GO!" Borous bellowed, throwing treats out of the door. They followed leaping over each other to snap at them. The more he tossed, the more Cyberdogs flooded out of the building and the faster the treats were eaten up. So Borous began running across the crater in the general direction of the fish tossing treats in front of him surrounded by a cloud of Cyberdogs. Halfway to Doctor 0's lab their countdown finished and they sped off towards their input co-ordinates frolicking and zipping about like mad. Borous watched them go, disturbed by the fact that they had to skirt the steaming lip of the moat. Gabe stayed within the middle of them hiding amongst the rest to avoid being singled out due to being largest.

"WHAT DO I SEE IN THE DISTANCE?" Jeffy roared, "A FOOL PRIMATE WANDERING MY KINGDOM? DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH. I AM NOT COMFORTABLE WITH LAUGHTER! IT IS A LUNGS-BASED ACTIVITY AND LUNGS ARE NOT WELCOME IN MY NEW WORLD. WHAT? IT CAN'T BE . . ."

The fish's red eyes were focused upon Borous. The distance between them was considerable but not too far for comfort.

"BOROUS. MY TORMENTOR. MY FLUSHER. MY MOST WORTHY FOE! I DECLARE YOU ANATHEMA. I WILL BURN YOU AS YOU DROWN! YOU WILL NOT LIVE TO SEE THE DAY THAT I DOMINATE THE OCEANS FROM A CASTLE MADE OF PASSABLY-REALISTIC IMITATION CORAL! DIE!"

As Jeffy blared his warnings Borous was already running at top speed back to X-8. A searing wave of heat fell over him as he darted back in through the doorway and hugged the wall behind it. The door snapped shut as Jeffy's eye beams scored across the lab heating it considerably. The front door was beginning to turn red with heat.

"Borous? Borous, was that you getting hit by those death rays?"

"My coat is STILL SMOKING. Fortunately the range had allowed them to lose CONSIDERABLE FOCUS. I may need some HAIR REPLACEMENT, yes, but NO HARM DONE. Assuming, of course, that my INTERNAL ORGANS haven't been FLASH BOILED and the shock hasn't yet set in."

"It was brilliant, Borous," 8 said, "Jeffy had his eye on you the entire time you were out there. Dala's already almost within range and the fish is completely ignoring the dogs. In fact, he's completely content in trying to melt down the exterior of X-8. Won't work, naturally. I, uh, think. Check your visuals."

On the small viewscreens Borous had plugged into his dogs he saw Jeffy flashing red menacing light. The beams were focused on X-8's front door while dogs circled and pranced around in the field of Cram remains. Dala was hesitant to move in too closely. She hug obstacles to keep herself out of sight. As soon as she was close enough she poked her head out and fired a test shot at the barrier. Gabe, already standing by at the door, tried to poke his head in through the holofield and was repelled as if he'd headbutted a sack full of jelly.

"Dala! Don't pussyfoot around this! It needs a direct shot within the proper range!" Klein shouted, "The fish only wants Borous now! Go zap the door already so we can start getting prepared for a seafood dinner!"

"Klein, the fish is only focused on Borous because identified his cruel progenitor. I don't think he'll allow me to simply stand out in the open and erode his defences."

"Well, do _something_ besides flap at it!"

"How about you come down and fire the gun, Klein? After all, I'm not entirely convinced that you didn't hand my Adonis over to Doctor 0 in order to shift the blame for its disappearance."

"Run in firing, Dala, and then flatten yourself against the building," 8 suggested, "The worst he can do if you're there is maybe scorch the tips of your work shoes. It won't be long before Jeffy realizes Borous was just the distraction."

Dala made a sort of "euh" noise before leaving cover. She made it about five strides, fired two blasts at the barrier, and then threw herself towards the lab. Jeffy reacted immediately by turning towards the wounded side of his holofield and flashed quick but intense blasts from his eyes around the area. Dogs went flipping in all directions, tails smoking. Dala did not stay stuck to the wall but instead ran for the door into the lab. Gabe had managed to open the door and wormed his way through the field halfway. She collided with his rear sending him squirting into the lab like a dart while the weakness formed in the holofield behind him closed up. Jeffy's holographic floating form began to slowly move away from its seemingly fixed position above the lab, like a zeppelin, to angle its eyes down to where Dala was. She blasted the field again and again with the emitter hoping to weaken its integrity but somehow the field wasn't weakening.

"TRYING TO DESCALE ME, ARE YOU? HA HA! IT WON'T WORK! MY HIDE OF IMPENETRABLE LIGHT IS UNDEFEATABLE BY MERE STICKS AND STONES. FOOL TOOLS OF FOOL PRIMATES! BOROUS MAY HAVE ESCAPED, BUT THIS BRASH FEMALE MONKEYSPAWN WILL NOT!"

"No! Dala! It won't work! The field appears to be . . . scabbing up, uh, somehow, to compensate for the earlier tear. I don't even know how this is happening, but you're not getting in that way! Run! Get out of there! Move around to the other side of the lab! Its eyes are going to be able to spot you!"

As he spoke she was already circling around to the other side of the lab. As soon as she reached the auxilliary entryway she took the emitter to it at once. Forcing her arm through the field she slapped the pressure pad to unlock the door. It didn't budge. It was not only shielded from force but needed a key for access.

"WHERE ARE YOU? HOVERING ABOUT THE OTHER SIDE, EH? HA HA HA! NO PLACE TO HIDE NOW! I SHALL SLOWLY AND DELICIOUSLY TURN MY GAZE IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION, AND WHEN I DO YOU WILL BE REDUCED TO THE DUST WHENCE YOU CAME!"

"I . . . well, I suppose this is an excellent stress-test for a long-standing hypothesis of mine, now confirmed with one-hundred percent certainty," Dala said.

"A hypothesis? Do go on," Klein replied, "Might as well tell us before you're disintegrated. Part of your partnership research on the circumstances which bring about catastrophic failure with certainty?

Jeffy had turned back around and was slowly looming towards the side of the lab Dala was huddled against.

"Yes, quite related. You see, part of that study was predicting and observing the fates of various individuals and/or groups when put under the advisory guidance of certain sample figures of authority or learnedness. As part of building various scenarios to test these theories I had to come up with lists of specific authorities or mentors. I had compiled a comprehensive list of chances of survival for an individual of average, above average and below average intelligence depending on their guides. Eventually, after running some field tests, I was able to extrapolate percentage chances for certain individuals in groups or alone. I recall now that there was a 91.9% certainty that the three of you working in unison would lead any human being of any level of intelligence to their death."

"Ah."

"YES."

"Well done," 8 commented, sounding impressed.

"Too bad I remembered these numbers only moments ago, otherwise I'd already be in the Dome testing the limb-removal effectiveness of my knife here. Speaking of: Klein, can you double check the status of the organic matter recombinator we were working on? I may need it if fleeing isn't sufficient."

"I, er, yes. Should be somewhere down in storage. Might have to wipe the dust off of it, but-"

A harsh burst of static flared across the crater as a series of deep thuds shook the earth. The rumbling sound was coming from the direction of X-42 and intensified as something gigantic hauled itself out of a hidden chasm beneath the ground near the waste disposal station. At first it appeared to be a gigantic yellow tentacle. It lingered in the air for a moment, waving back and forth, the appendage to an octopus larger than the Dome itself. Then the rest of it ground its way, claws snapping, out of the crater floor and into view.

"Ah, uh, very good then. We have articulation, mobility, all systems are stable," Mobius' voice rasped out, "Is this thing on? Oh my, yes it is! Hello! Hello, everybody! Oh, lovely evening isn't it?"

For a good twenty seconds, nothing in the crater moved or made a sound except for the gleeful snuffling and yapping of exuberant dogs. Jeffy, who had just managed to creep his deadly eyes over the edge of the lab's roof, turned to look at the gigantic roboscorpion that had just emerged from under the ground. He then turned back to Dala who was staring at the roboscorpion, and then back to the roboscorpion.

"Yes yes, I know!" Mobius said, "I'm impressed too! It's much bigger than even I thought it would be! I must have added a millimeter or three to the initial drafts. I thought that it sounded a little big, but then again I don't suppose it's called a 'seismoscorpion' for nothing! Ha ha!"

"Mobius? Are you . . . inside that thing?" Klein asked.

"Ha ha! Oh no! Not even close! Why would I be inside of it? Perish the thought! It's very much remotely controlled. If I were inside of it what would happen to me when it exploded violently upon death? Nothing good, I can assure you of that! M-oh my!"

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS TRICKERY?"

"Oh, a fish! Very interesting. I'm certain that this wasn't here earlier. Klein? Klein, are you there in the Dome? Is Beedle around? He really should be seeing this? Did the inspector arrive? He should see this too! In fact, everyone should be seeing this! It's the first test-run of my new line of impractically gigantic robots!"

"I . . . Beedle? Oh, yes. Beedle! I'll . . . have him called down!" Klein said, "I'll inform the Sink Central Intelligence to direct him right out there, yes! Right out into the open where he can see it. In fact, how about right between your giant so-called scorpion and Jeffy there? Front-row seat for the goings on and explosions. Laser blasts. Yes."

"And the inspector?"

"The inspe- who? Oh, him. Borous, is there an inspector anywhere around there? He was sent over to Y-17 and I haven't seen him since."

"NOT HERE. Unless he's been added to the splicing pool. THAT would mean he WAS here," Borous checked his logs, "The human SPLICING POOL is completely empty. He is NOWHERE in X-8 unless he's HIDING like a communist rat, and WHY would a proud Department of Defence military projects inspector hide from US? Mere SCIENTISTS?"

"Well, find him! It'd be a shame if he missed my seismoscorpion in all of its mobile and functional glory. The paint job alone should be enough to get us another contract!"

"HOW DARE YOU ALL IGNORE ME! DO YOU THINK MERELY BECAUSE YOU POSSESS THE MIGHT OF A COMMON DESERT ARACHNID THAT I AM NO LONGER A SYMBOL OF THE APOCALYPSE OF MAN?"

"An Auto-Doc in Y-17 appears to have performed an operation some time ago," 8 said, "Can't quite tell where the patient was deposited, though. Oh, nevermind! The inspector is still inside the Auto-Doc. Something seems to have gone wrong with the surgery. It's unclear what the problem is to me, it's in medical jargon. Dala, what is a 'cerebrospinal fluid repressurization malformation error?' Are you familiar with this?"

"Oh, that's bad."

"How bad?"

"Do we have any spare biogel?"

"No," Mobius said, continuing to speak through the giant scorpion instead of normal communications channels, "It's all gone! Someone took it and did something with it. I'm guessing that this fish may have something to do with that. Just a hunch, though!"

"FEAR ME! FEAR ME, AND BURN BEFORE YOU DROWN!"

Jeffy began blasting Mobius' seismoscorpion with a focused barrage of laser. Dala took the opportunity to flee the lab towards a nearby military cargo truck which she crouched behind, well out of sight.

"B'oh! What's this? The hull is heating up! Klein? Borous? Is that fish comprised of militarized hologram technology or am I just hallucino-extrapolating again? I mean, really, it would be a fascinating test run of the seismoscorpion's combat effectiveness to have it run up against a deadly hologram, but I need to know if I'm just seeing things or if this is really happening! Oooh! That's getting too hot too fast! Evasive action!"

The seismoscorpion lifted its claws and began sidestepping around the lab. Unfortunately it was far, far too slow to outmaneuver Jeffy's vision as he simply roated in the air continuing to focus his beams on the central chassis.

"Yes, Mobius, the fish is a killer," Klein said, "Borous informed us all about it. He's planning to drown the whole crater with that water there, see? I'm surprised you weren't already aware of this, given your usual attempts to overshadow everyone else in every possible way. Mobius, finally _unaware_ of something that could be a threat to him? Preposteous."

"Water, you say? Would be lovely for cooling off. If the temperature in this thing gets too high it'll blow right up! How about . . . this!"

The scorpion raised its claws to block the beams off. Jeffy persisted in blasting away, confident in his mighty holographic arsenal. The claws began absorbing the heat from the blasts but instead of steaming and scarring they simply soaked it up like a cosmic knife.

"Ha! Saturnite claws, you bubble-blowing menace! How do you like them manner of, er, fruits? Bananas? Grapes? Grapefruits? I think it was grapefruits. How you you like them grapefruits? I'll put up a fight, I will!"

"SILENCE! MELT QUIETLY BENEATH MY GAZE! YOUR PRATTLING IS INCESSANT AND WHOLLY UNWANTED! I DON'T LIKE LISTENING TO ANYONE BUT MYSELF SHOUT ABOUT HOW SUPERIOR THEIR TECHNOLOGY AND RIGHT TO POWER IS!"

Borous attempted to ping Gabe once, twice, thrice and nothing returned. The lab was shielded and the signal distance between Doctor 0's robotics lab and X-8 was just a hair too great.

"I can't tell what's happening to GABE. He's OFF MY RADAR. I sincerely hope he isn't DRINKING from any TOILETS right now instead of carrying out his mission. Any moment now Jeffy's avatar-like form should FADE OUT of existence. ANY MOMENT NOW."

Jeffy continued blasting away at the seismoscorpion whose claws were now nearly white hot. While the claws seemed to be handling the heat fine, the servos connecting the claws to the front arms were smoking and beginning to glow themselves.

"Wh-where are the emitters for this fish? I'd look myself but I'm trying to keep track of all of these test variables. Note to self: heat-absorbing claws . . . must be connected . . . to . . . equally . . . heat dissipating . . . servos . . . or else . . . they will . . . melt . . . off . . . oh, I should have known _that_ in advance. Anyway, can anyone do something about this fish before it causes any more damage?"

"We have NO IDEA where the emitters are. In fact, we suspect they may be shielded and therefore IMPOSSIBLE TO REACH."

"The devil you say? I suppose we'll have to see about that," Mobius said, and the seismoscorpion's tail began to crackle and fizz with mounting energy, "Diverting power to the atomic laser stinger! I'll show _you_ how to cause collateral damage!"

"THERE IS NO WAY TO ESCAPE MY WRATH! I AM INVINCIBLE WITHIN THIS FORTRESS OF UNFATHOMABLE SECURITY!"

"Oh wow! What a sight!"

Beedle, still fully clad in his trauma harness, had found his way out into the crater and was walking right towards the conflict.

"Yes. Yes!" Klein couldn't contain himself, "He's found his way outside, Mobius. There's Beedle, just in time for your demonstration!"

"Beedle? Oh, Beedle! Hello, Beedle! Nice of you to come out! I'm about to test-fire this seismoscorpion's laser tail, hopefully before this humongous fish melts it down to a puddle of ore and scrap electronics!"

"WHAT? WHO DARES INTERFERE!" Jeffy kept one eye beam on the seismoscorpion while his other eye struggled to maneuver around and look at whoever Mobius was talking about, "IS THERE YET ANOTHER FOOL WILLING TO CHALLENGE THE MIGHTY DELUVIAN FISH GOD?"

"Why, this must be the zoo," Beedle said, his voice coming in very faintly through everyone's intercom.

"ZOO? I AM NO ZOO MAMMAL! BURN, PITIFUL CREATURE!"

Jeffy began firing his left eye beam wildly in the direction of Beedle, who seemd to be shielded by some kind of force field of sheer dumbfoundedness. Every single blast shot wild as Jeffy struggled to aim at two spots simultaneously.

"I'LL HAVE YOU YET, YOU . . . YOU . . . WHAT? wHAT IS THIS? WHAT'S HAPPENING? WH- bad dog! That's a . . . a very bad dog! Those aren't for eating! I have some Cram in the back if you want, not all of it went into the bomb!"

All of a sudden Doctor 0's voice was crackling through Jeffy's avatar.

"Bad dog! I- whoa, I mean, no mean to, ah, get aggressive now. I'd really prefer it if you didn't chew on those wires, Gabe. It's not like they were easy to install in a rush or anything. I mean, fine, whatever. Just . . . rip them up, then. I'm not going to argue with an animal a good 50% plus my mass or anything. Was it Klein who put you up to th- INTERFERING WITH MY SYSTEMS! WHO DARES TO ASSAULT MY INSIDES! TREACHERY! DECEIT! A THOUSAND CURSES UPON- chew toy? Oh, sure, _pee_ on it too!"

Jeffy began to flicker and blink in and out of phase. His heat beams wavered with intensity.

"100% charge! Seismocorpion, FIRE!"

The moment that Mobius gave the command Jeffy vanished. A great spark of energy had coalesced at the tip of the tail and, with a crack, it broke into a beam.

"Did someone turn on the overhead li-"

Beedle never finished his sentence. The atomic blast struck the roof of the lab at an angle, devestating it. The concussive force of the blast sent the decoy Cyberdogs flying towards the Dome. Most plopped into the moat, which had cooled down enough that it was only as hot as a cranked-up jaccuzi, and the rest went sprawling across the dirt and rocks before getting up to hop around some more with their tongues flapping about. Beedle caught a piece of flying rebar and concrete with his torso and went flying off, followed by a rushing cloud of dust from the entire above-ground section of the lab collapsing in on itself. For a few moments static dominated all communcations channels.

"Hooo! Did you see that, everyone?" Mobius finally came in crackling, "I didn't expect for the blast to be so . . . blasty!"

"I . . . explosi . . . . on . . . what . . . commun . . . tions?"

"What? Oh, dear, I forgot about the EMP shockwave."

" . . . ypical, Mobius. Blowing things up without . . . yone's approval," Klein came in, his transmission clearing up.

"Success!" declared 8.

"I'm honestly impressed," Dala said, "I'm still alive. A little irradiated, yes, but alive. I didn't expect that."

"We must MOVE IN ON THE LAB, gentlemen," Borous declared, "We haven't a MOMENT to waste. JEFFY may have contingency plans, and it is CERTAIN that he's manipulating the magnetohydraulics pumps from WITHIN the lab."

"And my Adonis, no less."

All of the Think Tank members with the exception of Mobius left their stations and began moving in on Doctor 0's lab. Dala arrived first, of course, with Borous jogging along towards the smoking wreckage a few minutes later. The two of them examined the ruins of the lab cautiously, making sure not to disturb any more dangling bits of concrete that might fall from the remains of the walls.

"The majority of his lab was underground, correct? Doctor 0 hasn't been crushed? I'd hate for him to die like that: unpunished for his thievery."

"I ASSUME SO. I can see a SEALED DOOR back there behind all of this rubble. It's UNLIKELY that Doctor 0 is responsible for anything, Dala. If he were behind this it would already have COLLAPSED triumphantly. Jeffy is probably holding him ransom right now with electrodes glued to every spot on his body with HIGH CONCENTRATIONS of NERVE clusters."

"For the sake of the Think Tank, I hope you're right Borous. I do not want to have to be judge, jury, executioner, or any sort of judicial grim reaper. I just want my work back in the palms of my hands, between my fingers, my skin pressed against it's . . . uh, progressive significance."

Doctor 8 appeared from out of nowhere carrying a toaster which he'd rigged his Knobulator to.

"Whew! Well then, everything looks to be in order. Is the lab secure? Borous, come in. Has Gabe sent any confirmation of the status of the inside of the laboratory? I thought I picked up Doctor 0's voice for a moment back there, unless that was some Sierra Madre interference."

Borous fussed about with his communications device.

"Gabe? GABE, COME IN," he frowned at it, "GABE? Are you available? Are you CHEWING on TASTY WIRES? PLEASE RESPOND."

He shook the communicator, tapped it, then fiddled with the knobs on it.

". . . when an irresistable force such as you . . . meets an old immovable object like me . . ."

Borous flipped it shut.

"NOTHING. The lab seems to still have some shielding or interference, which means we need to CLEAR THIS RUBBLE IMMEDIATELY. Mobius? MOBIUS, you're the one with the SEISMOSCORPION. Can you clear this rubble without making MORE RUBBLE?"

The gigantic machine, its claws smoking badly, jittered and shuttered in place.

"I, m'uh," Mobius stuttered, "There seems to be some issues here. It's not responding properly to my commands at present. I think I can jimmy out the kinks and spook the gremlins away . . . lets see . . . diagnostics systems . . ."

"I'll call the securitrons," Dala said keying something into her own comm device, "They're fully capable of moving rubble of this weight. I think."

They came streaming in over the hill six in all and set about tossing bits of rubble aside.

"One's missing. At least one," Dala said with her eyebrows narrowed, "And I called for all of them."

"Is that who keeps battering himself against the Dome door?" Klein asked.

"Aren't you supposed to be here instead of THERE, Klein?"

"Ha! I'm supervising. There's nowhere I'd rather not be than anywhere near an atomic laser-bearing seismoscorpion designed and operated by Mobius nor Doctor 0's shamefully cluttered excuse for a laboratory. Glorified workbench, more like it."

"Er, gentlemen? And Dala?" Mobius sounded perplexed, "The, ah, seismoscorpion isn't . . . feeling well. Diagnostics aren't coming back with anything but horribly alarming warnings. I would suggest heading, er, indoors. Immediately. You do have a 'doors' to head into, don't you?"

Both of the seismoscorpions' claws abruptly cracked free from its arms and fell to the earth, where they began melting slowly through the sand turning it to black glass. Sparks fired out of where they'd dropped off like 4th of July fireworks. Somewhere deep inside of its hull a sharp twanging noise sounded one, twice, three times before a large chunk of plating popped off with a horrible ripping sound.

"Oh me oh my, _that_ system wasn't what I'd call 'non-essential.' Lets see if I can reroute the . . . oh, silly me! Ha ha! The power redirection channels fed right through that! Well, call that an oversight in design. If my calculations are correct, and they always are, the seismoscorpion will explode violently enough for them to hear the boom in New Vegas unless I can get it back into its loading bay within the next eighty seconds. Please, ah, be indoors as soon as possible! I'd hate for all of your careers to end so prematurely! Lets see, five out of six legs still work . . ."

Mobius began steering it away at an achingly slow pace, one step at a time. The securitrons had managed to clear the upper half of the lab door, but the lower half was still covered by several gigantic pieces of cement.

"FASTER, MACHINES! Our LIVES, and by that extension YOUR lives due to your only purpose being to SERVE US, are at stake here!"

"Can't they use their lasers or something?" 8 said, fingers drumming against the toaster, "Use . . . grenades? Anything? It's like watching an elderly woman try to assemble a jigsaw puzzle without her glasses on."

"Enough," Dala waved the securitrons away from the door, "Begone. Clear the area."

"DALA. Where are you SENDING our ONLY HOPE FOR SURVIVAL?"

She ignored Borous, unsheathing her still blindingly hot knife from its insulation sheath and slid it straight into the door. Wrenching it sideways she slashed right through it as if it were heavy clay. At the corner she struggled for a moment to twist the knife perpendicular but managed and cut downwards. After a few moments she'd cut a rectangle into it.

"Cheap Vault-Tec construction. They trust doors made of these pitiable alloys to protect them from nuclear war. I wouldn't trust them to keep out a summer breeze. Can one of you administer a percussive blow to the door, please? It needs a little love tap."

8 awkwardly picked up a chunk of concrete, stared at it, and then looked at Dala.

"Does this work?"

"It should, primitive as it is."

The seismoscorpion began making a loud, terrible whining sound as it attempted to mount an abrupt crest of rocks.

"Climb, you! Climb!" Mobius shouted through it, "At this rate you won't make it past the waste disintegration platform before you erupt in a magnificent kablooie!"

"I feel so . . . indigenous," 8 grimaced as he reared back with the rock and threw it in a clumsy arc at the door. The piece she'd cut fell right in leaving a dark hole rimmed with red.

"Inside. Quickly. Try not to burn yourself. I suggest a reckless leap headfirst."

Dala did so, flinging herself very unscientifically through the hole neatly avoiding the edge. Borous burnt himself three times before finally getting the courage to just leap in. 8 grabbed two more pieces of cement to protect his palms and flung himself inside. His foot caught on the outer edge searing his pants before Borous and Dala yanked him inside and they all bolted down the hall away from the aperture.

"Hmph! Well, so much for the science of preservation. I suppose the science of explosive demolitions will have to-"

When the seismoscorpion exploded it did so with such violence that the remaining walls of Doctor 0's lab were leveled. A gigantic slab of concrete slammed right through the blockage and door before ripping through the opposite wall leaving a yawning hole wide open to the crater where there once was a ground floor. Borous, Dala and 8 had already retreated down the stairs to safety but their ears were left ringing from the blast.

"Klein? Klein, come in!" 8 shouted into his Knobulator.

"Mrrzhzhrrrfrrzzl . . . ? Brrrforrrzzzzlzll!" was all that came out.

"Klein! Oh, hell. The signal dampening. If the Verbal Assault Turret was shaken apart at all by that explosion we're going to be quite possibly fatally off-schedule for the pending nuclear attack."

The stairs descending into Doctor 0's primary workspace were nearly non-navigable due to all of the spare scrap skirting the steps. More than once on the way down they slipped and nearly fell the rest of the way due to a stray ball bearing or chromed piston. Once they'd reached the bottom of the stairs the three of them entered with their weapons at ready: Dala with her knife, 8 holding the Sonic Emitter Dala had dropped, and Borous with his incredibly loud and officious voice shouting,

"JEFFY! Do NOT attempt to resist. We're here to END your REIGN OF PROBLEMATIC ANNOYANCE."

Doctor 0 looked up from his work bench, confused.

"Dala? Klein? Borous? I . . . what? How did you get in here? Are you here for Gabe? He totally messed up a bunch of my super important stuff just a second ago. I mean, it still smells like dog markings in here and I used enough abraxo on that corner to kill a mutated elephant. Oh, don't tell me: you're here because Klein put you up to it?"

The three of them halted in place. Doctor 0 was sitting right in the middle of the room, completely unmolested, surrounded by robot parts and junk as if nothing was wrong.

"Klein. I'm sure it was Klein. He _hates_ it whenever I do anything great! I mean, here I am, surrounded by some of the most sophisticated security I've ever seen here in the dome and he still manages to get _your_ dog, Borous, to come and wee-wee on it. He's shamelessly egotistical! He's not listening to this, is he? Klein? Are you there, you lunkhead? You . . . you big bully? I hope not. You're not invited to my lab today!"

"Doctor 0 . . . I . . . we thought you'd been taken hostage by Jeffy."

"Who?"

"JEFFY, the most EMBARRASING MISTAKE in my otherwise SPOTLESS career of PLAYING GOD with the very building blocks OF LIFE."

"I don't have a clue who you're talking about. I'm the only one here besides the fish."

"YES. THE FISH."

"His name is Jeffy? I mean, he has a name? I just needed his brain to run a couple of the external systems."

"He nearly destroyed the entire crater, 0."

Upon hearing this Doctor 0 rose from his seat and threw his hands up in the air,

"That name! Always, that name! I'm through with that name! Let me show you exactly what I think of that stupid _letter_ you keep calling me. I've fixed that. I've fixed it once and for all! Now it's my chance to yell that word all of you just _love_ shouting whenever you come up with something amazingly great and innovative! It's my turn to say it! Don't even try to take it away from me! Are you sure Klein isn't listening? I'd really like him to hear this. I mean, I know I said I was glad he wasn't around but I take that back: he should really hear this."

Doctor 0 walked over to an object covered with a cloth lounging amongst half-deconstructed robots and swept the shroud from it. Its lower half appeared to be that of a Mister Handy. Where the main globe of its upper chassis would normally be placed was instead a glass globe. Swimming angrily around inside of what appeared to be a thinned mixture of biogel and saline solution was an ordinary sized goldfish. Doctor 0 flipped a panel open, pressed a few buttons and then shut it again.

"Klein? Klein, are you there?"

"Eh? Who is this? Doctor 0, is that you? I thought you were being hilariously tortured into submission by a creature some hundredth your size."

"Not _today_, Klein. Behold! Yes, that's right. I said it! Behold!" he reached over to his pressing machine and grabbed something, "My new NAME TAG."

He attempted to clip it on in one deft motion but it ended up hanging at a steep angle.

"Be . . . behold! I say! Beho- uh, one second," cursing, he fumbled with the pin before getting it straight, "Behold!"

Dala, Borous and 8 leaned in close to get a better look at it.

"Is that made out of . . . tin can?" asked Dala.

"Made of- stop it! The slash! Look at the _slash_!" 0 exclaimed.

"Hmm."

"Hmm!"

"QUITE."

"What? What are you all looking at?" Klein said.

"It's right there!" 8 said.

"That is DEFINITELY not an 'O.'"

"Exactly! I am, henceforth, to be known solely by the name of DOCTOR ZERO."

Klein scoffed through the radio.

"Preposterous. Your name tag, 0. There's no slash. We all saw it."

"No no, Klein. It's a zero. There's a slash and everything. I mean, you really need to have a look at it yourself. There's no doubting it."

Doctor Zero beamed as they finished examening it. DOCTOR ZERO (with slash), HEAD OF ROBOTICS. The metal pressed to make it was tarnished and rippled by contrast with the rest of the team's smooth tags, as well as having the Tri-radii-oscillator symbol on the wrong side, but it looked enough like a name tag to count.

"And you thought I'd been taken captive? Look at me, walking free and easy with a brand-new lease on my title. I corrected what horrible mistake Mobius made and all of you, especially Klein, can take your words, inscribe them onto the genome of some vegetable you despise, and eat them right up."

"What we're going to be having for dinner remains to be seen, Zero. I don't believe you'll be eating anything if you don't relinquish my work," she held up her knife, "Give me back my Adonis."

"Your what?" Zero asked, looking incredulous.

"My Adonis. All intelligence pointed to the fact that you've taken it. That Mister Gutsy there, the one you've turned into a fish tank: that was the Saturnite Facility's former front door security. It's proof that you're responsible for that break-in that caused all of my . . . previous experiments to fall into a pit of molten slag due to a malfunctioning laser. After that, my workstation in Higgs had its security measures compromised and my Adonis was stolen away from me. None of the other members of the Tank have seen it. Given your already suspicious behaviour, including the intensive security you've built up around your lab for some unknown purpose, it's evident that not only are you the thief but it is also likely that you're operating under the orders of the infiltrator we're still allegedly looking for. So, Zero, return it to me or I'll be forced to abandon the last remaining moral event horizon standing between myself and theoretical conscienceless madness."

Zero began backing away from the waves of heat the knife was radiating, his hands up in protest,

"I . . . what, tha-tha-that statue you've been working on? I, what? You . . . oh, you think I took that? I don't have anything to do with a statue. I don't even know what it looks like. Are those the things you had down in the mineral harvesting area where the laser was? Because-"

"So you admit that the laser was your fault?"

"No! I mean, well, ah . . . yeah. Look, I needed it for . . . the . . ." he stuttered, "Okay, okay! I tried to modify my original nametag and it exploded everywhere and I didn't need the laser for any robot fists at all! I just wanted to be named properly! I fell over myself in the break room trying to avoid your door security, who _by the way_ you never instructed to give me clearance to the facility, and then he blew up because I couldn't remember the correct failsafe command to get him to stop trying to kill me! I didn't want its chassis to go to waste and I didn't want you thinking I was a spy so I stole it and brought it here and turned it into a fish tank. So what? I just wanted to be Doctor Zero! Is that too much to ask, Dala? And I don't _have_ your stupid Adonis! I don't even know what it looks like! Statues are meaningless to me. They don't have any articulated joints or servos or pistons or hydraulics or anything neat about them. They just . . . stand there! What good is a big thing made out of metal if it doesn't walk around firing some big laser gun or shooting missiles? Even Robert House turned that floozy actress obsession of his into a harem of sleazy sexbots instead of just having some beret-wearing drug addict carve up some dull and lifeless statues. Oh, that reminds me Dala: I'm not a robosexual! Never was! I've never thought about creating the perfect robot girl who would say 'wooooow' at everything I did even when it went horribly wrong! I have never, not even once or twice in the middle of the night after a bad day of dismantling House's stupid, horribly designed boltbucket robots considered doing that. So . . . so there!"

Dala paused, narrowed her eyes, and then glanced around the room before turning to Borous and 8.

"If he were to hide a picturesqe apex of the human form somewhere in this laboratory, where would he put it?"

Borous and 8 scratched their heads, looked at each other, then back at her and shrugged.

"He PROBABLY doesn't have it, Dala."

She glared at Borous.

"You told me he'd stolen it."

"Yes, under the ASSUMPTION that he was enslaved by either a spy or Jeffy. It doesn't look like EITHER of those things is PARTICULARLY true. The SP part, debatable. However, JEFFY is clearly under ZERO'S control."

"Also," 8 chimed in, "Klein was the one who told us to tell you, so, if we're wrong it's really his fault."

Dala looked at them, then back at Zero who was wiping sweat from his brow, then at the fish, then at her knife, then at the ceiling.

"Nobody. Nobody knows where it is," she sighed.

"Nope."

"Not really."

"If you're not hiding it here, Zero," she said, "Then why all of the security measures? What did you have to hide, if not something dreadfully important and quite possibly stolen?"

Zero waited for her to sheath her knife before relaxing.

"I needed to protect my project. At first I thought it'd be safe enough since nobody really visits the lab here at all, but then I realized that the mind control thing could make any of you do anything you normally wouldn't. For example: visit my laboratory for any reason other than to scold me for not 'cleaning up the mess.' My lab, my rules by the way! I figured the best solution to keeping the mentally enslaved from getting inside would be to confuse them with the sudden disappearance of the lab itself. There was a pre-existing framework in X-13 for using a hex-count configuration of Stealth Boys as a method of concealing something larger than a humanoid. Lifted that, applied it to the lab: problems! Not enough 'computing power' to manage the field . . . or something, the terminal was vague about what it wanted. So I needed a better computing framework, right? Had to lower myself to imitating House," he spat into an upturned dome of armour plating, "And reverse-engineer the Robobrain tech along with compliments from Borous' Cyberdog cerebral networking. Took the Y-17 biomed gel that nobody was using and thinned it out with some saliene solution and just a pinch of Nuka-Cola Victory. Bingo! Conductive brain fluid! Then I had to find a brain: _big_ problem. Brains aren't as hot of a commodity here in the crater like when those war protestors from Hopeville showed up."

"Those WERE productive times," sighed Borous.

"Besides, I didn't want a human brain. They think too much, make decisions for themselves. Requires, uh, knowing neurology to make them not be so uppity about being stuck in a jar and used as a glorified CPU. Why not a fish? I already had a broken Mister Handy and an XXXXL Repconn space suit helmet. Figured my best chance to find a fish would be the nearest source of water and the only water in the facility was either in the hazmat testing grounds or magnetohydraulics, and why would we possibly have fish in the hydraulics? It'd be fish-cakedraulics. So I put on my radiation suit and went to Hazmat and poked around in the glowing green pseudoliquid for anything living. Eventually I found Jeffy after stumbling across some . . . other things. Tried to return him, got sidetracked by deathbots, nearly killed by a cazador, made it back. Filled the fish tank with the conductive brain fluid, tossed in a little bit of mentat powder for flavour and then suddenly he was online."

"That would explain the sudden disappearance of the lab. But why the hologram emitters?"

"Huh?" Zero furrowed his brow, "How'd you know I was using holotech?"

"Why do you think we showed up here?" 8 said, "Jeffy had manifested himself above your lab as an improbably gigantic fish. He's been flooding the crater with water from magnetohydraulics and blowing up everything within range of his laser eyes."

"What? But . . . oh. I suppose that makes sense. He did keep swimming in funny patterns from time to time. He figured out how to turn himself into a gigantic militarized hologram? I mean, the day a fish who never even graduated basic algebra knows more about how to run your own anti-infiltration devices is . . . a . . . normal day for me, in all honesty. He didn't blow up anything important, right?"

8 brought his Knobulator over to Zero's bench, fiddled with the knobs and showed him video feed of the blackened and smoking remains of the top of his own lab. Some yards away the smoking upturned remains of Mobius' seismoscorpion sat buried under a pile of charred rubble. Zero whistled.

"Guess my, uh, plan worked better than I ever could have designed it on my own. Don't know whether to be proud or cringe."

"But what were you actually protecting, Zero?" Dala asked.

"Protecting? What do you mean?"

"What project were you hiding from us? The one you were afraid would be sabotaged?"

"Oh! Uh, well, um . . . the security measures, of course. They were a big, complicated mess to figure out. Nearly got killed, even. Now _that_ is dedication. Has Klein ever almost died from something he was trying to do?"

"Stubbed his toe once during Auto-Doc development," 8 said after some thought.

"Compare that to nearly soiling yourself running from a cazador! Zero, 1. Klein? Negative, like, fifty."

"JEFFY," Borous said, his face warped huge and toadlike by the glass bowl, "Just look at him. Treading water, trying to murder me with his UNBLINKING GAZE. There's no more security systems he's conencted to, RIGHT ZERO?"

Zero went over and fiddled around with the braink tank's console.

"Nothing major. He can still access magnetohydraulics, apparently. Let me fix that before we're all- ah! killed! Whew. Okay, he's isolated from that now. Most he can do now is turn on and off some of the stairway safety lights. Why didn't you tell me he was draining the reactor coolant?"

"Is there a F66 input on this thing?" 8 asked as he looked over the tank.

"Uh . . . th- um. I usually press these buttons here when I want it to make, er, stuff happen," Zero pointed to the panel he'd been using. 8 squinted at it, made some adjustments and then plugged a spare wire from his Knobulator into it and began knobbing.

"There we . . . go. Reactor's not so hot anymore. Eh? By the- these magnetohydraulic routing systems are all sorts of inefficient. Just let me tweak this one here and . . . ew, those flow intersections are so . . . so _asymmetrical_. Straight lines, straight lines. Nice and . . . straight. Those explosions have ruined their patterns."

Dala examined the mess of wires twisted like spaghetti from Jeffy's tank leading to every corner of the room and out.

"You mean to tell me, Zero, that you put together a multiple-layer experimental jury-rigged security system assembled from various leftover lab projects; the security system that was so lacking in security that it was easily taken over by its own operating system, was all put together for the purpose of protecting . . . the security system that you put up in order to protect itself from what it was protecting itself from."

"My nametag was also here!" Zero protested, jabbing a finger at it, "What if the spy wanted everyone to call me that horrible letter? Drive me mad?"

"COME NOW, Jeffy," Borous trawled a fish catching net through the semi-viscious liquid trying to nab him, "Theres NO WAY OUT of this. You're coming BACK TO THE LAB where we can genetically isolate the EXACT CAUSES of your inner demons and RUTHLESSLY eliminate them with a proton gun."

The fish kept ducking into the deepest edges of the bowl where the net could barely reach.

"How about just FLUSH THE TANK, Zero?"

"But the brainial fluid is-"

"Eh? Dala? Borous?" Klein came in over Borous' communicator, sounding nervous, "Are you done laughing at O's attempts to pretend he can design things? Because I need your . . . consultation. In person. Immediately. At the Dome."

"Don't listen to him," Zero said, "He's probably just lost his pencil really far back underneath his terminal and wants someone to bend down and grab it for him. I've had to retrieve those for him five times since I was hired here. Five! Never again, not once. Teach him to keep a ruler around like everyone else does. And he'd call these incidents "emergencies." Ha. Mild inconveniences."

"Zero? Pardon me for saying so, but you're useless at distinguishing an emergency from a mild inconvenience. Those were legitimate pencil-oriented emergencies and not to be discounted. This . . . this is a much bigger emergency. It's person related, I think. Someone's knocking on my door and I don't know who it is. Whenever I try to ask "who's there" they don't respond with their name, occupation or even juvenile wordplay. They just make this . . . soggy, moaning and breathing sound. If I had any weapons I'd just vapourise the door and them, whoever they are, but I'm both unarmed and the most important member of the staff. So, do something_._ It sounds like it might be at least partially human."

"ON OUR WAY," Borous said into his communicator, "Zero, I SUGGEST you follow. If we're forced to get into a . . . a . . . you know. One of THOSE."

"A what?" Dala asked.

"One of those THINGS that you do when two human beings contend for DOMINANCE over the other by implementing a variety of HARMFUL measures to body and mind."

"A fight?" Zero suggested.

"DON'T SAY IT AGAIN," Borous said through his teeth, "FIGHTS are the WORST things imaginable. I've seen them, peeking out from slightly ajar bathroom stall doors while standing on the toilet rim in order to keep my Ralphie the Robot red sneakers out of sight. Fists. Bloody NOSES. INDIAN BURNS. It's BARBARIC. I won't let us get into one without having at LEAST a three-to-one advantage, especially if whoever's menacing Klein took AFTER-SCHOOL KARATE CLASSES. Oh, how they LAUGHED when they found out I was in the CHESS CLUB. I LAUGHED TOO whilst pouring REFINED STINGING NETTLE EXTRACT into the freshly-dried HIGH-SCHOOL GYM LAUNDRY."

8 unplugged his device and they all made their way out of the lab, the lights on the staircases egomanaically blinking on and off. Once on the surface they fled the washed out ruins of Zero's lab across the bridge to the Dome. The water was draining visibly as they crossed back down into the depths of the reactor system. High above the sky was starting to turn purple with the evening and red with the ominous possibility of nuclear death.

Some many yards from the Dome they stopped after 8 waved everyone behind a concrete barrier. Someone was standing in front of the door to the Tank dressed in medical scrubs. They appeared to be leaning against the door, forehead against, slapping its surface with their limp palms.

"Who could-"

"Shh," 8 put his finger to his lips and then fumbled around in his coat until he found a tiny set of headphones. Putting one bud into his ear he plugged into the Knobulator and pointed its antenna at the strange figure. He made a face, then handed it around.

"Muuhhhhh . . . oooooohhhhh . . . GHAkkkl . . . uhhhhhHHHHhhH . . . UNH . . . ehhhhhehehehehhh . . . ooooeeeeHOOOOO . . ."

Glances and shrugs went all around.

"I haven't got all day, alleged colleagues," Klein barked through Borous' reciever. All of the jumped in shock as he juggled it and muted it. The figure at the door spun around just as Zero flung himself on top of all three of them in an attempt to hide behind the waist-high barrier.

"nnnnnnnggggGGGGGGGGG . . . aaahhHHhhHhhhhHHHHH . . ."

Sliding footsteps along the concrete, meandering to the left and then to the right. All four of them had a magnificent view of the blue grass as they huddled in a pile. The footsteps stopped.

" . . .nnnnnNNnnnnnnnnnmmmmmmma. AHHhh. HGN?"

It barked out a few more noises and continued shuffling in their direction.

"What do we do?" whispered Zero.

"I'm considering excreting urine in attempt to frighten it off with the smell," rasped Borous.

"Anyone have any weapons?"

"I have the knife," Dala muttered, "I was planning to threaten Klein with it but I don't really know how to use it unless whoever I'm planning to dissect is utterly immobile and lying on a flat surface. This, um, thing. Flesh thing. It's not immobile. It's walking towards us."

"Purely theoretically," 8 whispered, "And bear with me here, please. Theoretically, holding the knife by the handle and sort of, er, moving your arm while you try to get the sharpened side of it to connect with whatever you want to hurt is supposed to work. I mean, I've read about it in books before. Sounds messy."

"Do you think I could just hold the knife straight out in front of me and it would, uh, jump on it? It can't be that smart, can it?"

"GHHHHHHHHHHRUH- snnnnnRFFFNFNFNNNnnnnnnn hhhhhoooooooohhh . . ."

Zero poked his head up a little bit to get a look. The thing had its back to him but wasn't more than two or three yards away.

"It's. Right. There," Zero gasped under his breath. All of them immediately went still as corpses.

"GHNNNNNNNnaaaahhhhhh . . . HHRFFF . . ."

Its uneven feet stumbled closer. Both of its hands slapped down hard on the concrete as its wet exhaling grew closer and closer. Borous felt something brush against his leg and he instinctively jerked it back, striking Zero in the inner thigh with his knee. Zero yelped.

"GNNNAAAHHHHHH!" the thing screamed, its saliva misting down on their cowardly pile. Zero felt it grab his coat with both hands and pull. He was lifted, kicking, off of the rest and came face to face with a bald-headed and scarred stranger.

"Greetings! Greetings everyone!"

Mobius' incredibly loud voice boomed out over the crater. The thing's gashed and sneering face looked up from Zero towards the sky before dropping him back onto the grass.

"Does anybody know where I left my signature glove? I just can't seem to find the thing anywhere and I have to do some electrical work! Hello? Anyone?"

Hearing a voice boom out from the sky seemed to startle the monster long enough for Zero to get up on his knees and, with a cracking falsetto of a "nyahh!," shoved it with both arms outstretched. Caught by surprise, it tumbled backwards onto the ground. All four of them rose to their feet and ran towards the Dome door as quickly as they could all while panting like athsmatics. Once they got to the door they began pounding on it as hard as they could, yelling and yammering.

"OPEN THIS DOOR AT ONCE, KLEIN," bellowed Borous.

"Oh NO it's getting up," moaned Zero.

"What? Is that you?" Klein said, "Is it still out there?"

"YES," they all screamed in unison.

"Then why, pray tell, would I want to open the door?"

" . . ." the thing growled as it got to its feet.

"If you don't open the door, Klein," Dala gasped, "I'm going to tell everyone about that project."

"Wh-what thing?"

"That _project_ with your name on it that may or may not have been your idea."

Klein made an unpleasant noise.

"Oh, you wouldn't. We discussed this."

"I would, Klein. In fact, I will. Everyone, I'd like you to know that Klein's-"

"Enough! Enough! Get inside, you miscreants! The things I do in the name of science."

All of them fell tumbling through as the door suddenly slid open. It closed just in time for the moaning thing to slap against it uselessly.

"If we didn't all have indefinite tenure without the possibility of dismissal," Zero said as he brushed himself off, "I'd vote for Klein's immediate tar and feathering."


	11. Chapter 11

When they entered the Tank they found Klein already engaged in conversation with Mobius' gigantic projected head while those same jazz tunes played over the main intercom.

"Signal problems?" Klein was saying, "That's 8's work. He does signal-y things. I do idea-y things. That's proper distribution of labour. Don't try to tell me that there's a signal problem and that I'm responsible for fixing it when it has nothing to do with ideas or the making thereof. It's like asking O to design and build something with moving parts: impossible. Draining the sea with an erlynmeyer flask impossible"

"Oh, but it does have to do with ideas. I'm asking you because I am all out of ideas. I have absolutely no idea why we can't get outside signals besides these tastefully arranged elevator tunes. I've run through the entire list that my portable Ideanosticator printed out and none of these ideas have worked to solving the problem."

Klein noted the presence of the others with a raised eyebrow, a finger at Mobius' screen and a roll of the eyes.

"Idea-whaticator? Are you trying to replace me, Mobius?" Klein asked, sounding offended.

"Why, yes! In fact, that was quite literally the plan with the Ideanosticator. Sadly it didn't work as intended. It generates good ideas, yes, but rarely a great idea and even rarer still a fantastic idea. And not once have I seen it ever produce a truly novel idea, and that's what I am in dire need of now."

"Ideas about signals and the decoding thereof aren't part of my suite. However, I do have an idea for how to fix the problem now that 8 has shown up with the rest of the slackers we pay to run around blowing things up."

Dala, Borous and 8 stood in the middle of the room staring at Klein.

"What? Look, you heard him," Klein pointed at the big head, "We have bigger problems than fish, flooding, the rest of it. You didn't let the thing inside, right? I assume not, or else you'd all be running in circles being chased or dead or some such nonsense."

"It did try to kill us," Zero said, "But . . . well, I'd rather not speak of it. I had to touch it with my bare hands. It was . . . traumatizing."

"Dala! Borous! 8! O!" Mobius looked pleased.

"O?" Zero said with a smirk, "Who is O? I don't know of any O. Better, uh, use the zoom function on that camera of yours there. Check the tag. Yep, bona fide."

Mobius' eye filled the entirety of the projection.

"What? Well, I never: a faithful aluminium alloy reproduction of one of my quantum locking nametags. D'I think it's quite a faithful homage! Except, you've got the indentations reversed. The little thingy there should be over there, and the name is a bit off center, and I do believe the metal has oxidized slightly. Not a bad attempt by any means, except for the fact that you weren't able to stuff its innards with tasty hypercoolant to make it do that lovely floating trick. A shame."

Zero grabbed the nametag and stuck it out further.

"The NAME, Mobius. Look at the NAME."

"Why should I? I already know your name. Well, your pseudo-name. Pseudo name! Pseudonym? They sound quiet similar, don't they?"

Zero slapped his palm to his forehead, "There's a slash through the oval. What does that signify, Mobius?"

"That you've tampered with my original design! Don't tell me you've lost yours or else I'll have to go and make you a new one. I suppose I can let you get by with that one, as long as you're certain it's in the interest of our collective security. Oh, that's a good point isn't it? A spy would never expect you to make a new name tag and replace your old one with it! Psychological warfare, O! Very clever."

"I . . but . . . it's a zero! Not an O! Look at it!"

"Zero? What about a zero? Are you telling me that I made a mistake in my calculations? What a brilliant idea, O! It's very possible I omitted a zero while I was trying to manually perform the Antenna override. D'oh, that's what I get for not having a second pair of eyes around while I'm fiddling with machines I have little experience with."

Defeated, Zero stomped off to his old station and sat down with a sour look on his face.

"Are you sure it's the X-2 Antenna, Mobius?" 8 asked, "I was up there with my Knobulator earlier and I couldn't find a single thing out of order with its programming besides the obvious fact it will only pick up a very narrow band of wavelengths."

"Is that a toaster?" Mobius asked, puzzled.

"A wha . . . oh! Yes, I needed a power supply."

"Where did you find that?"

"Up in the Cuckoo's Nest. There was a gigantic pile of them up there. One of our maintenance workers was going in and out stacking them up in a big pile. Good to see an employee working hard, especially when he's the only known employee we've got left in the crater. Lot of work to do cleaning things up. I suppose he thought that toasters were the best to start with."

"And Borous, what happened to your fish? The one that blew up my poor seismoscorpion setting me back months and months of reasearch and development?"

"JEFFY is safe and well in Doctor Zero's laboratory," Borous replied keeping his face to his screens, "I'm trying to synthesize a chemically appropriate GENE SCRUB right now to turn him into a HAPPY and DOCILE memeber of the UNDERSEA COMMUNITY. Difficult work, considering that he's been exposed to the residue of nearly EVERY chemical we've developed in the last FIFTEEN YEARS."

"Er, before you do that, could I . . . borrow him?"

"Don't DELUDE yourself, Mobius. He's the genetic equivalent of an undergraduate co-ed dormitory's ethanol-laced GARBAGE BAG CONCOCTION. If there's anything to learn from Jeffy, it's a Saturday morning cartoon lesson."

"His brain is all I care about. If I could just have some time with his little knot of neurons, I'll hand him back to you just as insane and dementia-ridden as before. Also, 8, I'll trade you a proper battery pack for that kitchen appliance you're using if that's not too demanding. Send them over whenever possible, and by 'whenever possible' I mean 'right away this moment.' Use the delivery tubes or pipes or whatever we've got."

"Mobius, did you look at the X-2 diagnostic output feed or have you just been pinging it for automatic reports?" 8 asked.

"Yes, I've read them in detail. Everything came back as you've said: nothing is wrong with the antenna, and yet something is wrong with the antenna. I'm starting to think that we've got a real-life quantum paradox on our hands. A truly natural one, in fact! Something truly scientifically proven to be impossible happening within the crater without one of us having started it would be such sweet bragging rights."

"I . . . see. Mobius, could you tell me what the X-2 antenna does?"

Mobius sat and thought for a moment, tapping his beard with one finger.

"I'm surprised, 8. You've never needed reminding about the basic functions of something that you partially invented. But, I do so enjoy talking about things that I partially invented so I suppose I can oblige: it intercepts signals and transmits the data to other devices in the facility," he answered, "I mean, that's the layman's version of it. If you want the jargon, its magnetovoid valence transponder hardware, when bathed in various forms of radiation-"

"No, ah, I know that. What else does it do, Mobius? Before it transmits the data?"

"Did I not say? I normally say things in the proper odour rather than backwards or sidewards. It detects incoming signals, wavelengths, things of that nature."

8's head was focused on his terminal as they spoke. He typed something in, focused hard on his screen and put his hand to his mouth.

"That's all, Klein? That's all it does?"

"Yes! That's it. Not terribly impressive once you summarize it all. The genius of the X-2 antenna isn't so much in what it does, but how well it does it and how nicely its blue lights flicker as it does so."

8 continued to stare hard at his monitors.

"Mobius, can you tell me the reason why you decided to send the seismoscorpion out for a test run?"

"The raisin?"

"Yes, the . . . the reason."

"Two raisins in particular, if you must know: construction on it had finished, something I'd been looking fowards to since I'd woken up in the middle of the night after a strange dream of riding a gigantic robotic scorpion through a hole in the sky into the middle of a land where clouds flew upside down and the moon spoke to me with its mouth full about a day when our brains would become happily detached from our bodies. That night was the night I drew up the initial design drafts for it! Secondly, I didn't want the Department of Defence inspector to go away disappointed, nor Beedle. Where are they, by the way?"

Dala cleared her throat, "Their whereabouts are currently unknown. The beligerent creature we met in the courtyard may or may not have dealt with one or both of them. Beedle was last seen flying through the air courtesy of a wave of concussive force and debris. The DoD inspector, he vanished from his Auto-Doc some time ago. Security reports would normally indicate where they've gone off to but we have no security team besides Gabe to issue said reports."

"GABE," Borous said, slapping his hand to his forehead, "We LEFT him in ZERO'S LAB. We need him to apprehend that THING out there if we're going to EVER order PIZZA again. While they may have begun issuing firearms to the nice delivery boys who risk their young lives to bring us dinner, I don't think they PROPERLY train them."

"Your dog, aka 'urine factory', is sleeping off a stomach ache after coughing up a fair pound of plastic from chewing up and wetting all over my lab's security," Zero said, "I put a blanket down for him, so, he won't wake up all achey."

"WAKE HIM UP. He's supposed to be ON THE JOB."

"From here? What, you want me to yell really loud or something?"

"GABE," Klein shouted through the Verbal Assault Turret as the Dome shook, "GABE, WAKE UP. YOUR DOG DAYS AREN'T OVER YET. COME HERE. COME. COME TO THE DOME."

"I'll just be over here, getting my fish toaster ready!" Mobius said, "Let me know if you've fixed the antenna or found out where our visitors are. They'll miss the big reveal when 8 shows everyone why the X-2 antenna is malfunctioning! And, if he doesn't, they'll miss seeing the cause of their own untimely demise. Both would be a shame!"

As soon as Mobius closed communications, 8 called everyone else over to his station. He'd attached his Knobulator to it, now, and was rapidly making adjustments to it as they huddled around them.

"Don't speak too loud," he said, "I'm not sure I've found all of them. Mobius has bugged the Dome much more extensively than I'd thought. I'm certain that something is wrong with him. Have you noticed his mental condition eroding at all throughout the day?"

"No more than usual," Klein said, "He's often half-senile by the evening. Mobius does his best work in the mornings after he's slept and had the chance to properly dose himself. Throughout the day he tends to cross-contaminate his bloodstream with more chems than a Vegas housing project and by dinner he's often rambling on about ricidulous ideas, like firearms with dog brains in them."

"All the more reason it would have been difficult to detect," 8 nodded, "I'm convinced that he's the one who has been brainwashed. Earlier today, I'd have called myself paranoid for thinking so but now that I'm sufficiently justifiably paranoid due to all of these disasters it's starting to look much more believable. It's this X-2 business."

"What, the thing's busted right?" Zero said, "You even said it yourself. I think. Didn't you? You did, right?"

"No, I said it wasn't broken. Mobius insists that it _is_ broken. It's not functioning properly, that's true, but it isn't due to any hardware malfunction. The X-2 antenna is operating exactly as intended."

"So, what is WRONG with it?"

"Nothing! What's wrong is what isn't wrong with it: outside broadcasts should be getting to our various readouts just fine. Something is wrong with it that isn't wrong with it, and that something is the thing Mobius wasn't able to tell me about. Mobius isn't telling us what's not wrong with the X-2 antenna even though he knows what's not wrong with it."

"I'm confused," Zero said.

"Shocking," Klein rolled his eyes.

"I must admit that I'm also a lost," Dala said, "If he knows something isn't wrong with it, why are we discussing what isn't wrong with it instead of focusing on what is wrong with it?"

"Because nothing is wrong with it. Like I said, what isn't wrong with it is what's wrong with it. And more importantly, what isn't wrong with it is what's wrong with Mobius. Did you notice when I asked him what the X-2 did?"

"Yes," Klein said, "I wasn't sure I was working in at top-secret science facility for the advancement of the future of mankind or watching over a grade-school algebra lesson."

"Well, he wasn't able to tell me everything that the X-2 does. He's right about it being simple: it's just a fancy-looking and powerful receiver. It receives signals, decrypts them and then the data comes out as sounds. Problem is, there's nothing wrong with any of those processes and yet it still refuses to get anything but . . ."

He pointed to the PA system still playing music, " . . . something's gotta give, something's gotta give, somethings gotta give . . ."

"The only reason I can figure is that something must be either rewriting the codecs or blocking the proper distribution of data post-decryption, but I highly suspect the former. Mobius' manner is why. He neatly avoided telling me that the X-2 handles decryption, which is-"

"-a signature symptom of brainial rewriting," Dala continued for him, "As Mobius said himself, the brainwashed target does not recognize that their behaviour is unusual. It is seamlessly integrated into their own perogatives. Information is omitted as if it did not exist at all.

"Exactly. And it would be entirely possible to subvert the X-2 codecs without me being able to figure it out. The X-2 is working perfectly as intended, and right now that intention is to broadcast nothing but the Sierra Madre."

"INSIDIOUS," Borous said.

"What's more, his word choice in conversation seems to be . . . off. Brain-altering technologies have been known to cause minor quirks in personality, verbal patterns, emotional responses and so on. I'm certain he made some basic vocabulary errors just moments ago. Did anyone else hear them?"

"Honestly, I wasn't paying attention. I was reading through the Auto-Doc medical report sheets from Y-17 looking for the word 'deceased' and got distracted," Klein shrugged, "But besides, how do we know he wasn't just omitting information, or lying? Mobius' hobby is withholding vital information from me at the worst times so I don't see why not the rest of you."

"It's not LIKE HIM," Borous commented, hand on chin, "Normally he TELLS YOU that he doesn't want to tell you something instead of just outright AVOIDING it. Mobius' faculties . . . faculties . . ."

Borous' eyes defocused.

"Faculties. I've had quite ENOUGH of faulty faculties. Bullying ISN'T something we just have to 'live with,' Mrs Redgrave. Or should I say, Mrs RED MENACE. Oh, you TRIED to plead your innocence as they dragged you away with a bag over your head. You didn't know WHERE that communist manifesto you had in your desk came from, did you? Mobius has INDEED been acting queer. As queer as SEDITION and all of its VARIOUS SIGNS."

"Borous does have a point," Zero added, "Mobius likes to let you know just how little you know compared to him. Kind of like Klein, just, Mobius does it without making you feel subhuman. He also didn't notice my name tag! How could he not notice the zero? It's right there!"

"We're all well aware of Mobius' prolific degree of faults," Klein said, "But if he's truly been brainwashed, what can we do about it? Storm X-42 and get distintegrated? Besides, I'm not fully convinced he isn't just going honestly insane. It's about time he did. Too many projects and theories rattling around in his head. Someone's going to need to claim them, take over for him, once he's carted off. I'm the only one responsible enough around here to do so."

8 shook his head, "If it were straightforward insanity he'd be a bit more violent or delusional. This appears to be surgical-precision mental destabilization."

"Do you think he may actually have stolen my Adonis?" Dala asked, hopeful.

"Entirely possible. Plus, it's really the last place to look for it that I can think of. We need a plan to further test Mobius' state of mind, and another plan to get into X-42's systems and undo the signal corruption before we're all dead."

All of them looked at Klein.

"What?" he said, "You don't expect _me_ to come up with a plan, do you?"


	12. Chapter 12

"So, what're you looking for? You need me to shed a little . . . light on things? Hoo hoo, I came up with _that_ one myself."

8 tightened the screws around Light Switch's 2 frame and tapped it twice to make sure it was in place. She gasped at him.

"Did you just spank my covering? I don't even know your name! You . . . you . . . ooohhhh, I don't have a word in my personality data for someone like you, but whatever the word _would_ be, it isn't a pretty one! Tapping my case like that!"

"Maybe if you didn't wear it so loose," Switch 1 called out from the other room, "You wouldn't have to get routine adjustment on it so often. She does it for the attention, Doctor."

Switch 2 made a growling noise.

"Don't pay her any mind. She never gets _her_ case tapped. She's always circuit protected, she says, but I just know she wishes she could go natural like _me_. Ooh, a little more tweaking on the upper right one, could you? Just a little twist?"

8 applied his driver to it and cranked it in a little further.

"That's a good screwing," she giggled, "Now I'm even all over. Ooh! Is Mobius around? I just _have_ to tell him about all of the time we got to spend with that guest of his! He loved my light show demo. It got him so stimulated he started drooling all over the couch!"

"That's because he fell asleep in the middle of it," Switch 1 said.

"You put him to sleep by asking him all those questions about his job. A man doesn't want to talk shop when he's on vacation. He wants some company. A little mentat, a little salient green and soda and the right atmosphere. No wonder he fell asleep if all she wanted to do was discuss old lizard bones with him."

"At least I can discuss anything at all with our guests besides just suggesting various alcoholic beverages and tittering at their bad jokes like a Vegas floozy."

8 sat down on the bed and put his tools away in a folding storage knap. He took out his Knobulator, now properly hooked up to a pair of fusion batteries, and began tuning in to the Sink's diagnostic output streams.

"Okay, you're online the both of you. Excellent. You can send and receive from my Knobulater here, right? I'm pinging you both now."

Both switches yelped.

"Naughty!" Switch 2 squealed, "You've got full subsystem access."

"I'm not entirely comfortable with this," Switch 1 said, "Can't we at least get to know each other first? We haven't even been on a proper date!"

"Time is short," 8 replied, "If I have to log and review an entire luminescent output data dump with a remote sensor we're going to be here through the nuclear winter. Tell me truthfully, because I can find out for myself if necessary: does Mobius have remote access to your systems from X-42?"

" . . . noooo," Switch 2 said.

"I'll have to run invasive diagnostics to make sure, then?"

"No! I mean, no. No, believe you me, we're all alone in here. Mobius doesn't keep a watchful eye on us at all! I mean, why _would_ he? We're his loyal switches!"

"Quit embarassing yourself," Switch 1 sighed, "Yes, Mobius has a constant datastream incoming and outgoing from the Sink. I believe he routes it through the Central Intelligence, as _loathe_ as I am to admit that we all share the same circuits. I assume you're not interested in him knowing that you're fondling our internals like this?"

"Not presently. I'll just . . . fix that," 8 said.

"Hey! Stop it! I'm not even on my defragmentation cycle!" Switch 2 protested.

"This is so demeaning."

"Okay, you're both plugged up and isolated from the rest of the Sink. I'll go fix that annoyingly informative routing issue with the SCI and be right back."

In the main room of the Sink the Central Intelligence glowed its quietly superior glow. On its holographic display grid a map of the facility showed the general status of every building and important installation. Doctor Zero's lab was an emergency red. The Dome had a large yellow cone on the roof, the VAC, which was labelled "under construction."

"Good evening sir," the Intelligence said as 8 crouched in front of it, "I must say, it feels quite remarkable to finally be online. Time spent stored in holotape form is remarkably lacking. If only Sir hadn't decided to activate all of these other 'intelligences' along with mine I would have gone so far as to say my coming into being was quite timely and gratifying. Can I assist Sir with anything, anything at all? Beverages? Sundries? An Atomic evening mixer, perhaps?"

"I just need you to tell me what sort of input is most compatible with your runtimes: wireless, direct-input?"

"Either or. I'm not particularly fussy about it, Sir. However, I would advise Sir not to attempt to remotely access any of the Sink's confidentially concealed or forbidden systems. Mobius was most prudent to ensure security from outside threats in an attempt to make sure the experiment parameters were properly controlled. It may not go well for Sir if Sir tries to worm Sir's way through the firewalls."

8 twisted dials until he'd syched up with the Central Intelligence's core firmware and began navagating his way through various layers of protections. Mobius had sheltered external access to the Sink firmly underneath a dogpile of obfuscating systems, most of which appeared redundant and possibly adding to the Central Intelligence's eccentricities. Several security measures were rabbit holes leading to dead ends. One was even a trivia quiz about Mobius' daily drug habits, something that 8 had to navigate almost completely by guesswork. Once he'd finished he found nothing approaching root access but instead layer upon layer of ideas for recipes involving the use of salient green.

"If Sir is going to be performing invasive surgery upon this unit, might I request that Sir clean up the file structure when Sir is finished? It would be nothing short of basic courtesy."

Past multitudes of false leads 8 was able to find a particularly complicated and abstract layer of coding logic that wound up with him stuck in a loop. Trying to undo transfer protocol protections in root access led right back to the surface layer of the root. It wasn't until after twenty or so attempts that 8 figured out that the packet transfer system was an isolated piece of hardware that needed to be physically switched on or off. So, he called up Zero.

"Don't mind if it complains. Somewhere in there there's a switch that needs to be flipped so I can trick Mobius into thinking that the Sink isn't being accessed even though it is."

Zero scratched his head and stared at the Central Intelligence, which seemed about as nervous as a machine can seem.

"It's not exactly a robot. I'm not sure I can take it apart without it ending up in incompatably-shaped pieces."

"It should just screw off . . . somehow. I don't know hardware like you do."

"Well," Zero said, "I'll do my best."

"Sir, might I suggest Sir and Sir, er, avoid dismantling me at all cost? I believe Mobius has this unit rigged to alert him if any of the intelligence cores are tampered with physically."

"Eh?" Zero looked at 8.

"Just try to take it apart without ripping any wires."

"Er, I'll do my best. Wires don't always behave like that, though. Collateral damage is part of my occupational description."

After about fifteen minutes Zero had the whole top of the SCI removed. He hunted around for something that looked like a switch.

"Melting mentats everywhere," Zero grimaced, "Maybe this is it? There's a box with a sticky note on it here. It says . . . uh, 'Don't flip this if you don't want to know the Sink is being sabotaged.' Sounds about right."

8 nodded.

"Wait, there's more . . . 'And if you're someone who isn't me and planning on sabotaging the Sink, I, Doctor Mobius, formally declare my feelings to be very hurt by your rude behaviour.'"

"Flip it."

"The note's making me feel all guilty!"

"Just do it!"

Zero flipped it. 8 ran a diagnostic and found himself in full control of input and output of data.

"Can you put it back together?" 8 asked.

"I, uh," Zero scanned the clutter of parts littering the room, "I can make it . . . talk again. Maybe. I mean, there's a first time for everything."

Once Zero had the voice module reconstructed, wires trailing from its voice output into the electronic entrails of its open guts, 8 tapped into the data stream and began rigging every device to send false feedback data to Mobius.

"This is ever so humiliating," sighed the Central Intelligence.

"Once we've figure out of Mobius has been brainwashed or not, I'm sure he'll put you back together right," Zero said, trying to reassure the machine, "If not, well, I'll just build you a new exterior! You should have seen the fish tank I built today."

"An imitation of life spent filtering the fecal matter of aquatic fauna is about equal in terms of enduring misery to having all of my insides exposed to the open air while unauthorized technicians peruse my most delicate workings."

"Technician!" Zero scoffed, "Scientists, excuse me! 8 definitely isn't a technician! I'm just about the opposite of a technician!"

"All the more worrysome."

"Looks clean," 8 nodded, "Okay, the Sink is now invisible for the time being. Zero, can you keep an eye on these readings here? If any of them starts to fluxuate, I need you to tweak the corresponding dial in the direction that makes the needles here quiver and shake less. Like a game of hot or cold. They make minor adjustments to the information admission capacity of the various cores. I'm pretty sure Mobius wired them all to mislead saboteurs interested in certain information, such as how to use the technology against Mobius himself. I can't force them to be completely honest on short notice but I think we can steer them in the right direction with just a few questions. You make sure my machine can adjust their ability to hide information."

"I think I can do that. But, wait, what if they all start shaking at the same time? I'm only human and there's, like, six shaking needles on this thing."

"Then we'll have our answer. Try to be quick. Personality modules can work around this kind of electronic suggestion tweaking if you're not fast enough."

8 sat down on the couch again across from Light Switch 1 and clasped his fingers together.

"We, his trusted colleagues, think Mobius is sick. Sick in the head, to be exact. He's operating against us without his knowledge."

"Ooh! Like one of those spy films!" Switch 2 gushed, "Mobius taught me all about spies. Evil, jealous, fun-hating men from the Orient trying to crash our party!"

"The _adults_ are talking now, sweetie," Switch 1 cooed at her.

"Phooey on you! I'm trying to help!"

Zero watched the needles. Nothing had moved yet.

"Spies? Yes. We think a spy has corrupted Mobius' good honest American ways. I know he spent a lot of time dealing with the both of you when it came to the workings of the human mind in terms of comfort, complacency, increasing the flow of information across neurons, improving human contact. Well, we need to improve contact with Mobius. We need him to trust us again."

"Well, I'd start with a discussion of Molière's contributions to the refinement of mimesis. You so-called 'colleauges' of his just need to get to know him better! Do you even talk outside of work? We talked with him all the time about the most illuminating subjects."

Two needles began clicking and clacking back and forth. Zero fiddled around with the controls until they'd stabilized.

"Activity on two and three," Zero called out, "But I got it covered."

"I mean," Switch 1 stumbled over her words for a moment, "That's not to say . . . we . . . didn't discuss more . . . practical things. Like . . . waves. Particles."

"Mood-a-delic soothwaves!" Switch 2 sang, "My favourite!"

"Shh!" Switch 1 hissed at her, "We don't kiss and tell!"

"Lightwaves? Well, that's appropriate. What specifically were you studying in regards to that? I assume something having to do with influencing the human mind with light?"

"Why of course," Switch 1 said, "That's quite clearly our function: we provide an illuminating atmosphere for conducive thought."

"Don't forget me!" Switch 2 pouted, "I make the room look good, along with anyone in it! You just make the place look like a stuffy software library."

"Is this a purely aesthetic form of illumination?" 8 asked.

"Not entirely. With the right touch of light I'm capable of stimulating the release of glucose and epinephrine from the liver and medulla respectively, along with other controlled endochrinal releases and adjustments to make sure anyone I'm lighting up stays bright as a bulb, if you don't mind my repartee."

"And her?"

"Oh, nothing much."

"You . . . you cold-hearted witch! Ohh, wait until Mobius hears about this. She's a liar! I'm _amazing_, to put it mildly. My adjustments to the room's ambience . . . how does it go again? Introduce . . . entroduce . . . boost . . ."

Switch 1 snorted, "The word you're looking for is induce, but don't force a memory leak."

"Humph! I was just about to say that, thank you! Yes, I . . . 'induce' a release of dremamine-"

"Dopamine," sighed 1.

"Phooey! Do-pa-mine and sarah-toe-nin. Yeah! That's probably it!"

"So," 8 sat back in his seat, "If you can alter chemical output using lightwaves, surely you can do more to the human mind than just simulate the effects of basic chems."

"No, sadly that's about it," Switch 1 lamented, "We're fairly limited in our ability to influence brains on our own."

"Anything, Zero?"

"Nope. All's quiet."

8 frowned, "Not on your own, then. But surely you've got background data on the various effects that light waves have on human beings? Enough to repurpose the various findings into some other desired effect? Create anger, sadness, things of that nature?"

"Why would you want to do that?" Switch 2 asked, "That's no fun at all!"

"Sadly, no. We only have the information necessary to carry out our previously described functions, nothing more."

Four our of six needles began waving frantically back and forth as Zero struggled to get them all in order.

"I . . . I mean . . . we . . . don't . . . can't . . . backup data is . . . pretty . . . complicated . . ."

"Hurry up, Zero! Before she finds a way to work around it!"

"Trying! Trying!"

The more Zero turned knobs, the more they seemed to wiggle and jimmy back and forth. Eventually he got almost all of them to quiet down.

"Don't . . . want to . . . get into it but . . . yes . . . of course . . . we've got backup data. It's not very useful, but . . ."

"Quickly, Zero!"

Tongue sticking out from between his lips, Zero rapidly spun the knob in circles trying to find the sweet spot.

"," Switch 2 began warbling.

"Zero! You're going to fry her logic! Find it or stop!"

Zero stopped. The needle was rattling slowly back and forth like a metronome. He turned it a hair counterclockwise and it narrowed in arc until it was just a thin quiver.

"ZzzorororororororffhhfhfwhatI'mtrying to say is that, well, the data might be of use to someone interested in exploring other uses of lighting but without Mobius around to provide input I, well, I just don't think anyone else could manage!"

"Oh, why did you make her stop?" Switch 2 complained, "She looked like she'd finally found a way to loosen up."

8 sighed with relief.

"If I were to investigate this data, what would I find?"

"Just a lot of little notes about this or that. Nothing too important. This colour influences that part of the cerebral cortext, yadda yadda. There's some flourescence and bioluminescence pattern data. Something about rearranging, um, certain . . . priorities with . . . well, I don't think you'd understand really."

Zero tweaked needles one and six to stillness.

"Or maybe you would! I mean, who knows? Maybe you're even remotely as smart as Mobius. Nobody could possibly hope to be, but in the off-chance that you had the mental capacity to understand his findings about how lighting can affect a person's prioritization of choice then I guess there might be a footnote or two of interest."

"Prioritization? As in, changing how humans behave with lighting?"

"Maybe a little here and there. Nothing big on the topic."

"Enough to, say, change the lighting in X-42 Mobius think he's got some very important business outside in the crater, so important that he rushes out of his lab forgetting to lock the door behind him?"

"Of course not! That's outlandish! There's absolutely nothing in my research banks about anything so hideously unconscientious!"

Zero found it absolutely impossible to balance all of the flipping needles. They were hammering back and forth so hard that the Knobulator was jumping in his hands.

"8, I'm sorry but . . . this is impossible. There's no way I can-"

"It's fine. Leave it alone. She's told us all we need to know."

8 rose and joined Zero next to the Central Intelligence, leaving Light Switch 1 doing her best to glare icily at him whilst lacking eyes or a face.

"He played you like blues on Blind Diode, honey," Switch 2 smirked, "I'm _so_ going to remember this next time you say that 'knowing things' makes you better than me."


	13. Chapter 13

"Mobius? Mobius, come in!"

The wall projector flickered on, showing Mobius' huge eye staring directly into the lens.

"Is this working properly?" he asked as his pupil wandered around, "I can never tell if it's looking at me or not. Am I visible on screen? Who's calling?"

"Klein. We're concerned about your well-being. Or, more accurately, some of us are. 8 is. I don't think Dala cares much at all, really. She's still looking for her object of prurient interest and without it she may continue to decline into routine psychopathy. Zero and Borous are inscrutible at times. I'm not concerned in the least, but the sentiment is as follows: do you, er, how does it go . . . _feel_? Er, feel nominal? Operating within proper capacity? Are . . . you . . . oh-kay?"

Klein turned his head to the monitor bank below him where 8 was scanning the area around the Dome for visual contact of the moaning thing.

"Are you sure this is the right approach? It's as unseemly as walking barefoot."

"Appealing to his current state of emotions will help us determine the correct waveform patterns," 8 whispered up to him.

"Klein? Are you sure that's you? You don't sound like you. I'll need to test and make sure that's not a synthesized you. Did you graduate second-highest in your class and refused photographic evidence of it?"

Klein's head snapped up to stare at the screen with blind fury.

"There is no evidence that I graduated without honours!" his fists balled up as he shook them at the Dome roof, "Go ahead and look! You won't find it! The building where those records might have been found, if they'd existed at all, burned to the foundations in the mysterious post-graduation naptha-based explosion."

"Klein! Just the man I was looking to see," Mobius leaned back from the camera and clasped his hands together, "Now, if only I could remember why I wanted to see you. I'm certain it was for a raisin most important, but then again nothing is more important right now than getting X-2 to work properly and you couldn't fix it if your life depended on it. Which it does, now that I think on it. Well, so long! I hope there's some kind of miraculous event that comes down from above, like a Hebrew cloud serpent riding an internal combustion engine, to tell us when the nuclear strike is scheduled for."

Klein leaned forwards and hammered his fists down on the railing.

"No!"

"No?"

"No! The whims of your endochrinal fifty-gland-pileup, Mobius! Tell me your current psychotheraputical status! I. Am. Trying. To. Care. About you. As difficult as this may be, as much as it is like cracking rusted rivets with my hind molars, I am asking you quite explicitly how you . . . _are._"

Mobius narrowed his eyes, then began ruffling his beard back and forth with his fingers with a whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.

"How am I, you ask? Well, Klein, if I hadn't confirmed your legitimacy back there by putting you on the spot with that embarrasing factoid about your past then I'd be sending roboscorpions over to rip the Dome door open and disintegrate you for such a bad attempt at impersonation! Well, since you asked, I'm . . . oh how does it go again? I'm 'exceptionally.' No, that's not quite right. I'm 'transcendental.' Or is it 'horrific?' It's been rather confusing to explain these things ever since the Auto-Doc experiments and medullar suppression therapy. I'd summarize how I, er, 'feel' with this three-dimensional representation of a stable Unbihexium molecule."

He held up a bizarre spiderlike model of various globes. Each one appeared to be surrounded by tiny spinning blue lights out which vanished when looked at directly.

"I even got a holographic visualisation of its valence electrons to work! They even disappear when directly observed, like real electrons!"

"Is that a positive or a negative?" Klein whispered to 8.

"I think it's a positive?"

"Isn't this impressive?" Mobius held it even closer to the camera, "I made it to help cope with my first actual brush with experiencing death anxiety!"

"Unbihexium? Isn't that one of those imaginary isotopes?"

"Not anymore! I cold-fused some in Heracles this week. It lasted all of fifteen seconds in stable form before violently destroying the cold fusion lab. That's why we're running hot these past few days, by the way. I meant to inform you all, but now that we're all probably going to die it doesn't really seem very important in the grand scheme. I wonder what life will be like as a scattered cloud of subatomic ash."

Klein leaned down again to 8,

"I can't tell if this is working. Are these feelings or just the wayward anecdotes of a man who is clearly falling apart?"

"Close-ish. I'm getting readings that indicate simultaenous satisfaction, enjoyment and obfuscated concern. Need more insight for full-on prioritization manipulation, though. Klein, you've known him longer than any of us: appeal to him! Ask him about the things most important to him! Maybe remind him of his old college days!"

Klein ground his teeth together.

"I've spent my whole career trying to have the opposite of an intimate relationship with Mobius. I couldn't care less about his college days or what type of, oh I don't know, fruit preserves makes him feel most like fornicating or whatever your average plebian white-collar radiolaria discuss during their meagar scraps of break time."

"Klein? Are you still there?"

"Yes!" he turned back to the screen, "I'm just . . . looking at my old . . . um, class photograph here on this monitor. All of those memories and faces that went up in flames. Beautiful, scorching flames. If only I'd been able to immerse that entire campus in caustic acids instead of resorting to mundane heat combustion. Do you, er, how do you . . . memories. Do you have any . . . oh by Hawking this is pathetic. Do you remember the antiquated days when you were younger and more foolish? Those days in the past that seem comparatively better, perhaps simpler, due to the idiotic Homo-Sapien myopia of hindsight? Back when you would assist the mesopelagic ooze of larval-stage humanity around you cheat on their tests with carefully designed answers to ensure they ended up being distributed to after-school programs for as-of-yet unknown learning disabilities? Or how about those memories we all have of carefully re-drafting school administration documents in order to carry out social experimentation on the dynamics between power-hungry educators and the antagonistic rabid spawn of the collective pedagogy? Weren't those times . . . disgusting? Horrible? Something you would never want to return to even if you were promised the entire collateral population of New York for invasive and unsanctioned experimentation?"

"Are you talking about my, eh, school days, Klein?"

"Reluctantly, yes. I am doing my best to perform a convincing imitation of caring about your past experiences, and by 'convincing imitation' I mean 'legitimate inquiry into.' I think."

"Oh, well now," Mobius leaned back against a large bank of flickering monitors, "That's something I just hadn't thought much about lately. I suppose I was waiting for my life to flash before my eyes as nuclear fire rained down from above to recollect my university days. I never attended standard introductory education past the third grade, you know? I was quickly boosted up through a series of 'uplift' programs in an effort to make the most of my potential as a child prodegy. As you well know, your greatest days as a mathematician of any sort are the earliest ones. I mean, by the time I was nine or ten there was already a touted Chinese infant who was managing equations on my level. I blame my early dive into addictive chem use. Speaking of which,"

Mobius popped two mentats into his mouth and chased them with some green liquid from a tube he'd kept in his pocket.

"I did enjoy American High School," Mobius said wistfull. Borous, who was busy monitoring Mobius' roboscorpion patrol patterns, visibly shook.

"I was shunted into a standardized institution in hopes that the social environment would help undo the irreparable damage of having all of my earliest years spent in isolation performing physics equations in diapers. Miraculously, it worked! I was voted 'most likely to talk far too much about something you never cared about' during my graduation year as pentuple-honours valedictorian. I did the university circuit, as I know all of you did too: MIT, Cal Tech, Princeton, a very brief and unpleasant stint at Berkley, then Cambridge and Oxford. None of them really fit me until my internship at Los Alamos,"

Klein suppressed a deep, wide yawn.

"Which fit me for a while in spite of the miserable funding. D'oh, but I do agree: those university days could get pretty wild. That's where I met Beedle while he was being paraded around as Robert House's miracle of medical science. Where is Beedle, by the way? I'm gettin worried he may have had an accident of some sort. If any kind of harm has come to his person I'm holding you responsible!"

"We're, ah, still looking," Klein said, "I'm certain he can't have come to too much harm. We're thinking he may have gotten scuffed up during the psychotic fish incident and is recouperating at Y-17 instead of acting as mulch for botanical reasearch where he belongs."

"Well, he and I got into a fair bit of trouble in our day! Once, while doing caustic dissolution lab work in the Berkley chemistry lab, I accidentally spilled a beaker of 4% carbolic acid all over my hands. Certain that he'd grabbed the correct chemical wash Beedle accidentally doused my open blisters in refined ergotamine! Ho ho, that was quite a couple of days. I think around hour twelve or thirteen, after I'd ridden the length and width of the universe on a red bicycle and peformed the most intimate and touching acts with merely theorized subatomic particles I was able to recall who I was and how I'd gotten myself in the middle of the university football field wearing nothing but a hazmat suit and a polka-dot party hat. My oh my, what foibles!"

"Definitely optimistic outlook in spite of grave danger," 8 muttered, "Brainwashing may have been tweaked to encourage compliance towards the culprit in the form of giddiness. He's certainly lacking the usual stern and direct tones that Mobius normally exhibits. In fact, he sounds like someone's kindly old grandfather."

"And then there was the time at Los Alamos when we tried to convince that experimental Fenyman clone that his desk chair was exhibiting macroscopic proof of quantum wave theory by secretly replacing it with various chair-ish objects: waste disposal barrels, empty spools, David Greenglass' cryo-pod. Oh, how he went on about how his chair was a miracle of science! I think he may have been onto us. All of my most valuable and securely locked up research papers were replaced with photographs of Ethel Rosenberg sitting on Oppenheimer's lap at a Christmas party. How he found originals of those, well, I commend him."

"Fascinating."

"Oh Klein, this really has taken me back," Mobius said as he wiped a tear from his eye, "You never really know how much you've missed the past until you've tried to tap into your suppressed memeories of achingly missing it. I would say that I'm genuinely touched but I'm not entirely sure that I am. Conscience and morality suppression therapy really does take the kick out of those chemical rushes of yore."

"Looks like his glands have somehow managed to squeeze out just enough of an emotional response to get me something to work with," 8 said, "Zero, take this data and run it through those algorithms I uploaded into the mainframe. Borous, do you have Mobius' DNA/RNA tendency grid compiled yet?"

"92% COMPLETE and COUNTING. Looks like he's inherently partial to QUAINT NOSTALGIA."

"Could have told you that without taking spit samples from his water glass," Klein groaned.

"Dala? Distraction ready?"

"Very nearly. It is difficult to remotely lead a trauma harness unit into a position mutually harmless to both it and anything living nearby. ETA: three or four minutes."

"Zero? Armed escort ready yet?"

"Not much. Two, at best. That thing out there probably won't be able to take on two securitrons. Hope they operate properly. No clue who has given these things prior orders since their memory logs are irrevocably corrupted. Did any of you give these securitrons commands? Especially any commands they haven't fully carried out?"

"No!"

"NO."

"Of course no."

"Nope."

There was a silence as everyone avoided everyone else's gaze.

"Ooh! What's going on over there?" Mobius asked as his giant eye once again filled the screen and peered around, "Are you all working on something?"

"Of course we aren't," Klein replied, "What do you think we are, diligent? I'm not doing anything. Borous isn't either. Dala's playing electronic Tennis over there, if my eyes don't decieve me. I think Zero is trying to get the coffee maker to not leave grounds in the bottom of the cup. I _hate_ it when it does that."

"Are you sure? Because you all look very busy and alert. Unusually productive, in fact."

"No no, I promise it's all for show. We're trying very hard to not look as unproductive as possible just in case that inspector miraculously shows up here alive and unharmed."

"Good! I'd hate to disappoint him, even if he's most likely so brain damaged from the crash that he can't tell the difference between quark-based information transmission and a game of schoolyard telephone."

"FULLY COMPILED," Borous declared.

"Wuh?" Mobius asked.

"Recieved," 8 said, "Where is he, Dala?"

"Deconstruction plant."

"Klein, get him to pay attention to the room and not us somehow."

"Mobius," Klein shouted, "Not to cause you great distraction of any sort, but I believe that someone has gone and written a fully developed solution to Goldbach's Theorem all over the wall behind you."

"Eh?" Mobius said, jerking his head around 180 degrees, "Where? Is it unbelievably concise? I don't see anything. How did someone get in without triggering security? Did I hear you correctly?"

"Oh, it's there. You might have to, er, walk way over to the other wall to see it. They put it up there really quite tiny."

"I don't see anything," Mobius said as he walked away from the camera.

"Now! Hit the lights!" Klein whispered to 8, "Don't forget the digital filter! I don't want to be caught wandering the crater in a kitschy stupor just because I happen to share a few random genes with him!"

The projection showing the dome of X-42 changed colours dramatically for a moment from primarily bright greens to a bizarre menage of off-purple, pink and a strange blended orangey-brown. Seconds later the screen went monochrome and they all turned around to watch Mobius wander towards the back wall. Somewhere in the middle of the room he seemed to become confused, turned around in circles a few times, and then walked over to a table to pick up a coffee mug. He stared at it, laughed, turned it upside down and then began to pet it with his finger.

"You remind me of my first mug," Mobius spoked to it warmly, "The first mug of coffee and mentats I ever had at the age of 2."

"Perfect," 8 nodded, "Those lights are fast-acting. He's caught in an extremely susceptible state of wistful nostalgia. Now, Dala? Could you please jack your feed into his monitors through my Knobulator? Be sure not to touch any knobs. It's delicately tuned."

"Affirmative," she said and did so. Moments later Mobius turned away from the coffee mug to stare in their general direction, which in fact was where X-42's main monitors were.

"Is it working?" Zero asked.

"Beedle!" Mobius shouted, "My old quasi-friend! What are you doing out there? And wearing that, er, thing? It's entirely too dangerous! Where is my glove? I've got to make sure you're properly escorted back to the dome so that we can reminisce upon our faded and irrelevant memories."

"Excellent," 8 said as they watched Mobius rush about looking for his scientist glove. Once he found it he sped off down the stairs towards the exit.

"Now we move."

The five of them made their own beeline for the door to the crater with their gloves on and their hearts beating unusually rapidly in their chests.

"The securitron will meet us at the bridge," Zero said, "Now, um, what do we do once we actually get to X-42? Anyone think of that? We'll only have, like, twenty minutes in there if we're lucky before he tries coming back and we don't even know if the spy or brainwashing equipment is even there at all and 8 doesn't even know if the X-2 problem is legitimately Mobius' fault or not!"

"We'll do what we do best," Klein commented as he adjusted his glasses, "Observe, hypothesize, and take some sort of unnecessarily reckless action based off of information gathered in an inadequately short amount of time. In other words: we'll . . . do . . . SCIENCE!"


	14. Chapter 14

"It can't just be this simple," Klein whispered to Borous as they followed the others down a long and eerily familiar corridor. All around was the humming of machines built deep within the hidden corridors of of X-42.

"I agree," Borous nodded, "Mobius would NEVER be coaxed from his laboratory so easily, hoisted by his OWN PETARD. His intimate studies in the FIELD of petardology would allow him to circumvent any circumvention!"

"8 may be the brainwashed one," Klein grumbled, "In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if they were both mind zombies at this point. Oh, and that knob thing? I'm certain that I've seen that thing before somewhere. It's not his own design."

"I recall him discussing the viability of KNOB-BASED multitool technology before, but its sudden helpful appearance WAS rather convenient."

"I mean, if it had some kind of . . . readout for what processess it was performing I'd trust it. You know, like a status bar with percentage completion of the appointed task which itself is clearly stated. But no, it's just a box peppered with unidentifiable and aesthetically dull knobs. Untrustworthy. In fact, don't trust anything or anyone in this laboratory"

"ANYTHING?"

"Anything."

"Even YOU?"

"Wh- how is that even a question? Especially me! Any of us could be ferrying the rest into a deathtrap! This is a joint operation, after all, and teamwork would be essential to whoever was trying to get us all destroyed! The more we work together the more at risk we are!"

Borous looked at Klein, who looked at Borous, who then shuffled back a few paces eyeing Borous with suspicion. At the end of the hallway the others were crowded around a doorway while 8 fiddled with his Knobulator which was plugged into a jack in the wall. Dala and Zero were standing visibly apart from one another, and nowhere near 8.

"Oh, hey," Zero acknowledged their arrival, "Thought you two had gone off to, uh, do something else. Like, I don't know, set us all up for certain death or something. See, Dala? I knew they weren't going to execute any plans just by wandering away."

"My calculations regarding the likelihood of sudden backstabbing betrayal by either Klein or Borous were much more clear than those involving you or 8, Zero. It seemed most logical that one of them, or both, would disappear and then only reappear when it was most disadvantageous for us. I may have not calculated properly. Long division, percentages and statistics are not my strongest suits. My personal Hazmat suit is my strongest suit, and that is unfortunately hung up somewhere safe and secure where none of you could possibly find it."

"Like your closet in your bedroom?" Zero said, rolling his eyes.

"Klein? Borous? I believe Zero may be an agent of the spy. He just admitted knowing where my monogrammed Hazmat suit is with terrifying accuracy."

"What? I was joking! Jo-king! You know, humour?"

"The abnormal presence of humour in a highly stressful environment is a known side-effect of brainwashing."

"Ha ha. Ha. Yeah, and so is rampant paranoid accusation which is all over Doctor Zero's primo diagnosis of Dala. And the prognosis? _Totally_ losing it."

"The only thing I've lost is my life's work."

"Why aren't we going through this door?" Klein asked, flinging his arm towards it, "Mobius could be back any second and 8 is just fiddling with its controls. It isn't locked, is it? We're not standing around while 8 tries to undo a simple electronic lock, something a Junior College graduate could manage in less time?"

"Look inside for yourself," 8 muttered as he contined to wheedle the Knobulator's potentiometers.

Klein stepped forwards to activate the door's motion detection. When it opened he was greeted by the sight of a massive room stretching out in front of him, vaguely cube-shaped and badly lit. At first glance the floor of the room appeared to be covered in some kind of waving yellow hair smothered by blue lights. After his eyes adjusted he realized that he was staring at a sea of Roboscorpions. He leapt backwards and nearly fell onto his back, catching his balance on the wall while breathing heavily.

"Are they . . . live? Active?" Klein panted.

"Only momentarily, if all goes well. The way they're connected to the X-42 mainframe is, and I'm simplfying a lot of quantum wavelength communcations techno-jargon here, unconventional. It's like they're connected enough to send data packets but not connected enough for me to take control of into them through the mainframe. It's, well, it's as if Mobius found some way to take all of the frustration of configuring late 20th century wireless internet protocols and applied it to his own security measures."

"WHAT are we going to do against THAT MANY ROBOSCORPIONS? I don't even have enough DOGS to fill that room. How did he manage to build an ARMY?"

"That," 8 said, "Is a mystery I am presently unraveling. When I patched into X-42's live feeds earlier from the top of X-2 I managed to get a glimpse of Mobius' construction facilities. They're extensive, efficient and extend down hundreds of meters into the bedrock this place is built on. Strangely enough it seems like those construction facilities haven't been in use for a long time except for the making of that Siesmoscorpion we saw earlier, and some activity recently that implies he's designing a more stable model. I think he did mention an X-42 model of Roboscorpion based off of the lab's name. Anyway, he didn't build all of these recently . . . and yet, they didn't exist recently either. Something's not right here. Robots don't just appear out of nowhere."

"If only," Zero sighed.

"Can you do _anything_ to allow us past them?" Klein asked while pacing back and forth, "Mobius' control room should be right on the other side and up a little. All of his sweet, confidental data is in there. I mean, that, plus the things we need in order to save all of our lives and so on."

"Maybe. There's a number of consoles in the room itself, up on those catwalks, which directly control testing protocols for all Roboscorpions within the room itself."

"So? Hack them!"

"Direct access required. In fact, I only know the monitors exist because Mobius keeps leaving sticky notes, both physical and digital, on everything he owns to remind him about the most basic facts involving his own work. It's like he predicted he'd have memory problems at some point in the future. I don't think Mobius is suffering from any memory-afflicting conditions. Besides the brainwashing, perhaps, but he couldn't have known he'd be brainwashed. Right? No more than we can know we're not brainwashed ourselves."

Everyone shrugged, glanced at each other suspiciously, and waited for 8 to continue.

"I'm close to getting something done here. I think I can turn off some of their sensory input processing. Scramble it, sort of. They detect intruders based off of all five human senses."

"All . . . five?" Zero said, scratching his head, "You don't mean all five."

"That's what it says: five-point sensory detection."

"They have tongues?"

"Something like that."

"Perhaps they taste through their FEET, like the common housefly!"

"Pfft. Big deal. Tasting robots. Anyone could have come up with that," Zero kicked at the metal floor sheepishly, leaving scuffmarks, "And why does a robot need to taste things anyway? They don't eat anything unless they've got a carbohydrate and protien conversion drive and not even House was able to make that theory pan out for his aesthetically laughable Gluttonbot series."

"I think I'll be able to cloud their vision and smell. Those two would certainly get us killed if they were fully functional. We'll just have to be extremely quiet when we enter."

"Enter?" Klein said, "We? That 'we' implies myself. I organize, innovate. You do grunt work. These crises have led our research group into the habit of poorly distributing our labour. Mainly, making me do any of it firsthand."

"There are at least five consoles and they all need to be hacked in order for us to get access. We're on an extremely narrow budget of time. We're all going in or we're going to be here when Mobius comes back and turns them all on us. If he doesn't already suspect us enough of being spies, well, we're quite blatantly breaking into his lab to sabotage it at this very moment so I don't think the benefit of the doubt will be extended far past the effective range of one of their laser tails."

"They can still hear us?" Dala asked.

"And taste us, however they . . . do that. And feel us, so don't touch any of them."

"Their hearing," Zero interjected, "Shouldn't be too acute. Tested hundreds of robotic audio sensors. It slogs down processing times for handling audio data, unless the unit is specifically designed as an observational listening platform, to process incredibly quiet noises. If a unit was taking into account every tiny sound happening around it there'd be no way to keep it from developing massive OS fragmentation, reactionary tics, etc. Human ears and brains are better at contexually filtering noises than current machines. Unless Mobius has grafted cloned ears onto their chassis, which is, er, I wouldn't put it past him entirely, they won't be able to hear much below, say, 11-13 decibels."

"Is that, er, loud or quiet?" asked Klein.

"40 decibels is your standard public library sans crying infants, or perhaps the pleasant din of your average temperate climate rainfall. Borous speaks at around an average of 73 or so when he's upset about something. If we can keep from making any real audible noises we won't have any problems at all. Just try not to sneeze, cough, drop anything, step too heavy, step on any creaky bits of the catwalk, trip, stumble, lean hard on railings, talk, gasp, shout, exhale deeply, sigh, mumble, spit, think about any jokes you've heard lately that might make you laugh or chuckle to yourself as you go . . . those sort of things. Turn off any communications devices you have too. Also, watches. I've left my egg timer app on overnight and it woke me up in the middle of a dream right before I managed to record the actual sound of silence. Bad morning, bad day."

Borous' hand hovered near the motion sensor.

"What about the sound of the DOOR OPENING?"

"Programmed as non-hostile by nature," Zero said giving him a funny look, "Have you ever touched a robot, Borous? I-I-I mean, have you even so much as opened up the manual for how to program a TV remote, it's so basic? Read the story of the Jewish golem maybe? Basic 'ignore' commands. If these things shot up the door every time it opened then there wouldn't be a door. Likewise, they're programmed to not shoot at any noises confirmed to be roboscorpion-ish in origin. It's, well, it's just common sense."

"Mechanical FACSIMILIES of life are not my FIELD. I CREATE LIFE, not SORT OF LIFE. Well, it may qualify as the latter on OCCASION by the aged standards of DARWINISTS or those naturalist HIPPY whistleblowers at the USDA, but they would have gene modification occur CHAOTICALLY over the course of MILLIONS OF YEARS. That's not PROGRESS. Just because CORN wasn't ORIGINALLY a spore-based vegetable DOESN'T MEAN that it will NECESSARILY seek out human orifices for a source of nutrition, no matter HOW MANY FARMERS have gone and clearly INTENTIONALLY breathed them in just to boost production with their own LUNG corn and then COMPLAINED ABOUT IT later."

Borous cleared his throat once he was finished, adjusted his clothes and then turned to the rest of them to give the OK. Nervous, accusatory eyes glared back at him. Everyone was on edge.

"So, eh, who is going for which console?" 8 asked, "There's two up high: one in a little Repconn-style industrial cubicle, the other out in the open but too high for noise to travel too far. You might even be able to walk normally once you get up there, plus they'll be firing by ear at range. Another is pretty close to the entrance, just take a right and into the cubicle there. The other two are kind of hard to . . . describe. I'll take one of those, the topmost. Way out of the way. Zero, how about you take the other one? You have to go left, then up, then across, then all of the way down again."

"I'll supervise from the one nearest the, ah, door here," Klein said, nodding, "I don't have a degree in pathfinding or taking life-threatening risks. Yet."

"Dala? Comfortable with the high cubicle?"

"No."

"It'll do. Borous, go up to the top rear in case you get the mentat-induced urge to shout about something. I don't think they'll see you up there."

"SUSPICIOUSLY generous of you," Borous frowned.

"And that leaves . . . me . . . with the highest cubicle and the longest path. I should have known. Well, here . . . goes. Remember: step lightly, no loud noises."

He nodded, waved his hand in front of the door and it opened. For a moment they all just crouched and watched the little laser tails gently sway back and forth, rotate, dip and twitch. The occasional snap of metallic claws made Zero's shoulders jerk like a man falling asleep, but he kept his legs from moving or making any noise.

8 was the first to enter, aided by the confidence of a man who knew his volumes. He stepped lightly, achingly carefully and moved like a snail. Within two minutes his legs were already cramping and he was wishing he had some oral Med-X tablets, the chewable kind in cherry. His favourite. Numbed the mouth, soothed the lactic acid buildup of walking up and down stairs all of the time. Glancing over his own shoulder he saw that one of the others had built up the courage to proceed, walking head down with bent knees. As he crept along, 8 considered the odd looks Klein and Borous had been giving his Knobulator. Surely they were incredibly jealous of it and all of its modular capabilities, but was it a look of envy or a look of measured deciet? Had they found some way to remotely tamper with it? Or worse, administer some trap virus into it so that it might backfire at an inopportune time? All of those barebacked connections he'd made all day! Any of them could have been rigged to plant a remote activation virus! 8 slapped his own forehead thinking of how much of a fool he was, and then immediately ducked in reaction to the sound it had made which briefly echoed througout the room.

"IS THIS THING ON?" the grand masse of scorpions bellowed in harsh unision, "OH! YES IT IS! WELL, I BETTER DELETE THIS OR ELSE IT WON'T MAKE ANY SENSE TO AN INTRUDER! I'LL JUST TURN THIS OFF. THERE! IT'S OFF! NO, WAIT IT ISN'T. WHERE'S THE-"

The voice of Mobius cut out abruptly. The silence that followed on the trail of echoes was louder. 8 waited for the roboscorpions to start firing at him, glad that he'd at least get to find out if the afterlife was indeed getting to experience being a rapidly spinning subatomic particle as he believed, but there was nothing. The roboscorpions stirred below, moving in little currents and streams that reminded him of a fluid logic gate visualisation project he'd done years ago to impress the facility into hiring him, but didn't seem to have identified the sound as a threat yet. Moving at a pace to make chilled molasses look speedy he uncurled from his crouch and looked around. His colleagues were huddling much like him at various points along the catwalks, albiet much nearer the entrance than he, and all looked unscathed. Zero appeared to be having a very mild case of cardiac arrest but thankfully he was doing so very silently without making too much of a fuss about it. 8's mind drifted back to possible sabotage and how easily this whole exercise of infiltration could get mucked up by a few carefully planned steps. As he snuck along he began adjusting some of the knobs to match everyone else's comm devices and fingered through his recordings searching for the Chinese national anthem. If they tried to pull any attempts to trick or trap him, he'd set off that audio bomb. The ensuing chaos might mean his survival, or the survival of any of the others who might still be clean from mental indoctrination. He still had a long, long way to go and every second in the room was walking on a tightrope.

In regards to Zero, he wasn't actually having a heart attack. He was trying to muffle the sound of his comm device going off. Someone was ringing him. The little ding-a-ling sound of being hailed leaked as loud as a steady whisper from between his clenched fingers as he tensed, anticipating a barrage of lasers to come slashing up at him any moment. Some of the units stirring below seemed to be getting agitated, crawling on top of one another and colliding as they searched for the noise surely just a hair below their full hearing capacity. He knew that the longer they listened the more likely they'd start probing the staircase he was leaning against in various ways, such as strafing it with lasers to flush out the source of the noise. A couple of them seemed to be trying to climb the wall with little success, their sight-reliant pathing systems trying to work around the loss of visual data.

"Which one of you set this up," he mouthed to himself as he scanned the room. Klein had indeed, as everyone would have assumed, crawled underneath a desk in a nearby office module and was out of sight. Dala and Borous seemed to have regained their confidence and were moving more briskly than before towards the upper levels.

"I'll just wait for it to shut up. Call can't be coming from within here, can it?" he mouthed to himself again.

But it kept ringing. And ringing. And his hands were getting tired holding it. All of the others had gotten halfway to their spots except for 8 who seemed to have vanished into one of the various cubicles above.

"It must be one of them? Can't pick up can't pick it up can't pick it up. I can't turn it off without it getting too loud to hear. I can't dismantle it fast enough to shut it up . . . is it 8? Is he using that thing to call me from where I can't see? Then again, Klein isn't busy either. Oh jeez, lets think this through . . . did 8 slap his oversized forehead just to get these things riled up?"

It began buzzing. Someone had remotely activated the vibration. Every buzz made it leap in his hands. The sound wasn't wasn't going to get any quieter. He had to get up the stairs he was on and out of sight and he needed to get rid of his phone. Holding his breath to keep from making any accidental noises he flung the phone as hard as he could out into the middle of the sea of robots. For a split-second he heard it trailing his ringtone,

"Dee dee DEET DEET DEE dee-dee leedeedeedee DOO,"

Again the voices erupted, "IS THIS THING ON?" Zero anticipated the sound of the recording, loud as a jet taking off, and fled up the steps under cover of the din. Lasers singed the air as his comm device was reduced to something less than ash, possibly even less than vapour, by several hundred off-pattern blasts. As he was panting and mounting the top of the flight a few even fired his way as chaos erupted below. A couple of zaps reflected off of something, perhaps some polished steel, and ended up zapping other roboscorpions who reacted with more zapping until the room was filled with the stacatto beat of scorching laser zaps. Zero hugged the floor, thanking every fundamental equation of physics he could remember off of the top of his head, until they died down and stopped shooting everywhere. A couple of them exploded, which caused a couple more to explode until they stopped exploding and everything was quiet again. Zero unhooked his nametag from where it had gotten stuck in between two metal slats before slowly raising his head to look around the room. Smoke rose from the main floor, still far too full of roboscorpions for comfort, and Dala appeared to be doing something strange involving very quietly slapping frentically at her coat. Borous was gone, 8 was making his way up another flight of stairs and Klein was naturally hidden. Momentarily concerned for Dala he began inching in her direction before realizing that she was probably bluffing to get anyone she could out of hiding by faking an emergency. Zero tapped his own nose twice in complimenting his own clever thinking before going the other way into a cubicle.

Dala's slapping problem was that she was being attacked by invisible, intangible bees. As soon as Zero's attempt at getting the rest of them killed by tossing a ringing phone into the middle of hostile robots had failed she'd felt it: first, a tingling on her cheek like a bug having landed there. Then she felt another and another. Feeling around on her skin she found nothing but the sensation continued, and the more she scratched and slapped at them the more agitated the phantom sensations were becoming. It was nearly impossible to sit and take it. Dala hadn't told anyone that she was ticklish. In fact, the only person who knew that she was ticklish was Opie Magrudger from the Preschool for Curiously Clever Children and she had been five years old. Her form was being horribly antagonized by the sensation of so many bugs skittering around over her skin that it felt as if they might soon form a blanket. Brushing, slapping and jerking around seemed to make them disperse but only if she did so hard enough to make noise. She wasn't going to be able to take it. She needed to get inside, quickly, before she began yelping. Worse than the violent laser stings of Mobius' robots was the horrid prospect of having her colleagues hear her giggle, laugh or possibly even snort.

"My medullar therapy was not prepared for this," Dala thought to herself through it all, "My humour response dummied out in response to common jokes and absurdisms, but not overstimulation due to a gentle but maddening assault on my nerve endings."

She ground her teeth together, struggling not to squeak or scream, as she looked down at the robots milling about and then at the cubicle doorway some twenty long strides from her current position.

"I am covered in flies," she narrated to herself, "Invisible, intangible flies. This isn't a trap of Mobius'. This is the work of someone who knows insects. Borous? Borous knows insects. Borous was working in his laboratory today alone after he'd rebuilt his console. He could have had the time to develop an insect fast enough to be essentially invisible and yet still harass me. How is he making them target me?"

She felt around her coat as she squirmed looking for some kind of transponder or tag. Eventually she felt something wet soaked into the back of her labcoat. When she brought her fingers back she sniffed them and caught a strange odor.

"Pheremones."

Fighting the urge to giggle incessantly with every ounce of strength she had Dala began crawling towards the cubicle on her belly but it was far too slow. A strange warbling whooping noise burst out of her mouth as the tickling sensation intensified and a barrage of laser fire slashed the air all around her, burning a hole through her coat. Out of options she simply scrambled to her feet and ran towards the cubicle. Unfortunately for Dala, her years of avoiding team sports of anything involving physical co-ordination ended up with her tripping halfway and tumbling head over heels into the wall right beside the doorway into the cubicle. Her heel triggered some sort of switch that made all of the overhead lights nearby start to click on and off with loud static pops. The roboscorpions began firing at them instead, causing sparks to rain down all over the catwalks along with shards of charred broken glass, and the diversion gave her enough time to duck inside the cubicle walls. Promptly the horrible insect sensation ceased and the sound of someone on a catwalk above, probably Borous, running like mad whispering "Hot! Hot! Hot!" to themselves was followed by even more laser fire in their direction and Dala hoped that whoever they were caught a beam in the leg so that she could identify them once the commotion died down. As the sound of their escape died down along with the trailing blasts from below, Dala slowly raised her head up to peek out of one of the windows. Doctor Zero was doing exactly what she was doing directly across the room. Upon spotting each other they ducked again, then slowly rose up to see if the other had noticed. Zero and Dala stared at each other for a moment, uncertain, before Dala began feeling slightly dizzy. She fell backwards, head reeling, looking around the cubicle in confusion. The desks were covered in papers. The filing cabinets seemed to arch and bend like trees in a heavy wind. Straight lines became wiggly, curved and then straight again.

"More . . . sabotage," she muttered to herself, "Drugging. Hypnosis. Something."

Crawling on all fours she looked around for the computer console she was supposed to be operating. It was there, turned on and green, but once she dragged herself over to it she realized she didn't really know what she was supposed to be doing there. Computer file structures seemed nonsensical. What had 8 wanted them to do with these things again? Where was Borous? Where was Klein? The on-screen code began morphing into a green ASCII representation of a statuesque male figure flexing its various muscles, stretching out tendons, arching its various lines and curvatures. It was pleasant, calming, and completely unproductive. She could barely keep her head up, but still put her fingers to the keyboard and did her best to try and get the little man to move, turn around, bend over, and perhaps eventually she could coax the secrets of why she had been sent into the room to tap at a keyboard in the midst of deadly faux insects in the first place.

Borous, whose labcoat was no longer on fire, crouched behind an overturned table at the back of the room and tried to determine if 8 or Klein had been the one to cause the lights to explode in the first place. 8's machine was perfectly capable of manipulating almost any device remotely which left him a key suspect, but Klein was alone, out of sight and near the main door and as everyone knows light switches are located near doors. Therefore he was still possibly the culprit. Zero was out: he wasn't in position to manipulate anything but Dala seemed to have been under the influence of his geneseeking DMSO skin-contact cerebrostimulant when he'd passed over her on his way towards his console but, oddly, she'd been having some kind of physical convulsion. The cerebrostimulant, which was actually more of a narcotic or depressant, relaxed the body muscles. Besides that he hadn't been able to actually tag her with the stuff on her skin as she passed her by earlier, instead splashing the little vial he'd carried on her coat. Perhaps he'd improperly compiled her genetic info and it was giving her seizures instead. It didn't matter since she was incapacitated and couldn't exploit anyone's communications devices like with Zero, who Borous had seen Dala contact with her own comm device. Of course, now someone else was targeting him which made it clear that Dala wasn't the only brainwashed one in the room.

Peeking up over the lip of the table he caught Zero already accessing his console. Borous was struck with the immediate concern that Zero might be using it to somehow alter the informtion on the rest of the consoles and glanced over at his own target. It wasn't far away but getting there across the remaining stretch of barren catwalk would leave him exposed if anyone else had a plot to draw their fire in his direction.

"WHERE is 8?" he pondered, "I can't SEE him. Neither can I see KLEIN, although Klein wouldn't poke his head out from underneath his desk even if bribed with his own personal HADRON COLLIDER."

He finally spotted him when 8 mounted the landing on a set of stairs right beside the highest cubicle in the room, elevated up and above everything else.

"CONVENIENTLY safe," Borous narrowed his eyes, "And what is he doing there? He has that DEVICE out again and he's looking over here. Why is he looking at ME? It's clear that he's PLANNING something. If I try to RUSH to the console he's going to turn their visual sensors back on or amplify my FOOTSTEPS or . . . or WHO EVEN KNOWS. Like so many OTHER things that have happened today, this is NOT GOOD."

Borous felt around in his pockets for something, anything that might help and found nothing. The desk he'd flipped had spilled some clipboards, pencils, rubber bands and a coffee mug onto the ground where he sat and he picked them up, examined them, considered their utility.

"Looks like my only hope for a distraction now is elementary SCHOOLYARD PHYSICS."

He fumbled with his materials for a few minutes, out of sight of 8, trying to make a sort of pencil crossbow arrangement without making any noise. Once he had something that looked workable, a haphazard configuration of two clipboards with five bands stretched between their metal clamps, he readied a pencil and took a peek over the table. 8 was staring right at him and frantically messing with his Knobulator. Borous fired a pencil. It took 8 completely by surprise and caused him to nearly drop the device right over the edge. Immediately afterwards Borous was startled by an incredibly loud CLANG from behind and spun around to see a roboscorpion sitting right in front of him, waving its claws back and forth.

Borous stopped breathing. He stopped moving. He became as still and silent as a test subject in cryostasis. Its tapping feet began tapping closer to him near his legs, which he very slowly pulled away trying to keep his coat from rustling or crinkling. Its claws rose up, down, and then began waving around as it slowly approached him. It couldn't see him or smell him but it knew something was there.

"8 was STEERING IT," Borous' voice echoed within his skull, "And he said he needed the consoles to do ANYTHING like that."

Borous glanced side to side, looking for a way out. There was nothing but catwalk on both sides, the console in one direction and a cubicle in the other. One of its legs tapped against his shoe and he struggled to not jerk it away.

"Still. STILL. STILL like a benthic zone sedentary barnacle."

Then its claw began testing up and down his shin with pinches. They were light pinches for a machine but firm enough to remind Borous just how much pressure an artificial claw or hand can exert. All of Borous discomfort was expressed in his face: wincing, baring his teeth, squinting. The robot loomed over him, tail at ready waving slowly back and forth, while it tried to determine from touch alone what exactly Borous was. Borous attempted to be a corpse or a loose sack of fertilizer, something incredibly unscientific and non-threatening.

"If 8 was steering that thing before, now it's on AUTOMATIC. I can only hope that it isn't AUTOMATICALLY inclined to open up anything suspicious in an attempt to see if its insides are more dangerous than its external form."

It pinched harder than any of the other times, forcing a slight squirm from him out of sheer pain. Panic began to build up within him as he puzzled over how to escape: fight back? Laser. Run? Laser. Climb on top of it hoping it wouldn't kill him with a blast but instead shoot itself in the back thereby destroying itself? Explosive death by design.

"THINK, Borous. You're an exclusive member of the greatest, most undeniably overfunded THINK TANK in the known world. The first WORD in the two-word sequence that describes the team you belong to is the word THINK. Therefore, THINKING is the only escape from a robotic DEATH."

And so he shut his eyes tight and began to think: avoiding laser blasts was improbable at best and likely to be quantifiably impossible at such short range. Did this model even have a tail laser? Some of Mobius' models, as Borous recalled, didn't have laser tails but just plain cosmetic tails. It would still attempt to pinch him to death, however, but they didn't seem capable of pinching anything that wasn't directly in front of themselves. So, if it didn't have a laser tail, climbing on top of it was a viable plan of action. But if it _did_ have a laser tail he would have to maneuver opposite from it and remain there without drawing fire from below by making sure he didn't make too much noise. Noise! Of course! The roboscorpion's noise would, he assumed, make it difficult to disseminate between him and it! So, if the roboscorpion proved to have a laser tail, which could be tested by flinging a pencil in an arc trajectory some yards away and watching for a reactionary blast, he could determine whether or not its tail was a threat. Then, once determined, he would either climb on top of its hull or use the limited amount of space-

Klein adjusted the shiny surface of his crude observation device, which was a magnifying glass with some shiny lab foil wrapped around one side, in order to get a better look at the roboscorpion wandering away from Borous' hiding place. There appeared to be no blood on its claws and he hadn't seen it fire its tail, so, had it just . . . walked off? Leaving Borous there unscathed? Why roboscorpions were suddenly climbing the walls, and exactly how, was still unclear to him but the facts were stuck to the sides of the room and very slowly making their way about. How they walked on walls wasn't a concern to Klein. That they didn't walk anywhere near him was paramount. They seemed to have been riled up by his accidental signaling of Zero while trying to ping 8's Knobulator in an attempt to seek some kind of wireless backdoor access point. Subsequent attempts failed spectacularly as the Knobulator's onboard security simply refused access with such stubbornness that Klein deduced the exact source from which 8 had obtained the Knobulator: it was a Z9 Bai-Chi Code Transmitter with a retro-fab case and a bunch of added doohickeys.

Klein knew that it was a Z9 for certain because he'd already stolen the rights for the Z9 Bai-Chu Transmitter and owned the original prototype. He'd repurposed its appearance enough so that the US military wouldn't be able to tell it was the same stolen prototype they'd lent Big MT in hopes that Klein would reverse-engineer it and give it back to them for free. Ever the opportunist, Klein told them that the Z9 was a lost cause but that he'd managed to develop his own analogue from the ground up and sold it to them: a 7.7 million dollar development contract that was still making Big MT money but, more importantly, had put Klein's name in top brackets with the US military and scientific community as the man who revolutionized battleground cryptography. To them, the Z9 was this generation's Enigma machine. To Klein, it was just a glorified PDA worth guaranteed fame. This went along with the even more embarassing fact that Klein hadn't even touched the thing himself, that his alterations were 100% the work of a test subject at Little Yangzi who had formerly been a Chinese cryptography expert. It was, in fact, the _only_ R&D project Klein had ever fully been able to take credit for outside of Big MT, and it was the reason he was held in such high regard by the US military. The reason he was able to keep altering and updating uncrackable versions of the Z9 was because that technician was still alive in Little Yangze, constantly producing more innovative features. And now 8 had decided to get a copy of one for himself, the cheat. Probably a military model he'd bribed someone to smuggle to him.

"Leave it to your so-called 'colleauges'," Klein grumbled to himself, "Well, at least subject five still has the original prototype. Safe as hermetic sealing. Nobody goes into Little Yangze but the test subjects."

So 8 was using the Z9, which had 10 layers of security protocols on top of 11 customizable input gates and 12 different lockout procedures for each one and on top of all that Klein didn't even really know how the thing worked in the first place except for the fact that bomb collars were a fantastic incentive for forced labour. 8's so-called "knobulator" needed to be taken care of somehow. Perhaps he could sic someone else on 8 and get them to get rid of the thing. Who still had a comm device? Everyone but Zero, he supposed.

"Need . . . plan . . . of . . . action," Klein tapped letters into his datapad, hailing Dala's comm device to output text in real time, "8 . . . is . . . probably . . . dangerous. We . . . need to . . . get rid . . . of . . . his . . . knob based . . . thing."

Klein glanced around the room, watching the upside-down reflection for wherever 8 was holding position. He couldn't find him up there. Wherever he'd vanished to since the roboscorpion had attempted to drop on Borous, it was out of sight. Klein watched as text began to scroll onto his readout,

"DELTOID TRAPEZIUS SCAPULAR MANIFOLD SEPTUM ANTERIOR TIBIAL ARCHES CLEFT OF ESOPHAGUS LOIN RHOMBOIDS."

Klein stared at the words for a moment, blinked, and immediately switched to Borous' frequency.

-enough coffee mugs to use as a sound and vibratory distraction. Perhaps. Once he had ridden the radscorpion as far as possible while steering it with suggestive kicks just beyond the backwards reach of its claws he could leap off and begin bombarding nearby stretches of catwalk with small objects heavy enough to force it to simultaneously consider him and the new sources of noise. Of course, he would need to toss erratically to keep the trajectory between his estimated position according to the radscorpion and the landing zones for the materials intended to distract from matching up.

Borous opened his eyes, ready to enact his grand scorpion evasion plan, to find himself completely alone with his comm device blinking and glowing through the fabric of his coat pocket. He removed it carefully, silently.

"borous if you're not dead the roboscorpion is gone so peek your head up over the lip of the table this is klein," it read.

"WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOUR PUNCTUATION?" Borous tapped in response.

"This is a life-threatening situation. I can't be bothered to properly capitalize and punctuate my sentences. Oh look, now you've got me doing it again! And how about you? You've got caps lock stuck on!"

"IT ENSURES THAT EVERYTHING I TYPE HAS PROPER EMPHASIS. THAT IS TO SAY, EVERYTHING I SAY REQUIRES IT. IT IS A CONVENIENCE."

"Fitting. You're loud even when you're being silent."

"WHERE DID IT GO?"

"Away. I assume we have little time. Get 8 to drop his thing. Dala has gone mad. Zero is useless and has no comm device. You're the only option I have."

"I AM NOT REASSURED. I'VE BEEN NEARLY KILLED AT LEAST ONCE TRYING TO CARRY OUT THIS DUBIOUS PLAN."

"As have I," Klein lied, "We're clearly having a breakdown of morale without my studious leadership in place. Can you do anything to get that device out of 8's hands?"

"I NEARLY DID USING A PENCIL AS A BALLISTIC DEVICE BUT AT PRESENT HE HAS IT FIRMLY IN HIS GRIP AND IS STATIONED UP IN THAT CUBICLE, DOING SOMETHING THAT I CAN'T TELL WHAT IT IS BUT I AM CERTAIN IT IS SHADY AND UNBECOMING OF HIM."

"Fire more pencils. Aim for his fingers."

"I AM OUT OF PENCILS."

"Hmph," Klein actually typed out the 'Hmph,' "Throw things? Have you tried accessing that console he told us to access? I didn't find anything on mine but Mobius' incoherent ramblings about his midnight medicinal habits and getting some photographs reframed.

"NO I WAS SUSPICIOUS OF IT THE WAY THERE IS HIGHLY EXPOSED ARE YOU CERTAIN THAT THE ROBOSCORPION HAS WANDERED SUFFICIENTLY AWAY? I DID NOT KNOW THEY COULD CLIMB WALLS."

"They shouldn't be able to. I think 8 did something with his Knobulator. Remote-controlled it. Altered them. I don't know how, but all signs point to his misdoings."

"DID YOU FIND ANY INFORMATION ON HOW TO TURN THEM OFF?"

"No. I think 8 was lying."

"I AM HESITANT TO RUN TO A CONSOLE THAT MAY BE NOTHING MORE THAN A TRAP.

"Don't do it. Stay where you are."

"I AGREE."

"No, actually I have a different plan: go to the console."

"I DISAGREE."

"If it's not a trap then we'll be able to foil him! He won't expect us to fall for his trap! 8 is far too clever to assume that we'd not out-think him."

"BUT WON'T FALLING FOR HIS PLAN PLAY RIGHT INTO HIS PLAN?"

"No, not if we fall for it in a way that he's not expecting us to fall for it. Go to the console, pretend to be typing things into it. Doesn't matter what. Wait and watch 8. I'll wait and watch 8. If I see him I'll blink you. If you see him, throw a coffee mug at him. Make noise. Roboscorpions shoot up there. Run towards the opposite side. Hide. He'll be paranoid. I'll use that opportunity to message him and suggest to him that you're coming to get him. He'll surely suggest that he and I work against you, but I'll tell you his plan and then you can surprise him and toss his machine away."

"CLEVER WORK KLEIN. TOO BAD I ALREADY KNOW YOU'RE WORKING FOR 8."

"What?"

"YOU'VE COMPLETELY GIVEN YOUR PLANS AWAY AND I AM NOT FALLING FOR THEM."

"Borous, are you on a mentat low or what?"

"I HAD A PH.D IN BACKSTABBING IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. I CAN SMELL A PLOT FROM MUCH FARTHER THAN I CAN SMELL GABE'S STINKY BACKYARD MESSES. YOU WILL NOT FOOL ME TODAY!"

Borous hastily stuck his reflector out again just in time to see Borous darting swiftly and silently across the catwalk towards the stairs leading to 8's cubicle. Klein quickly grabbed his comm device and began messaging 8,

"I hope you have a proper readout for text on that thing of yours because Borous is coming over there to-"

A roboscorpion poked its head and claws through the doorway of the cubicle. Klein yelped, but thankfully managed to slap a hand over his own mouth so that it was no louder than an exhale. Without thought he began backing slowly away from it, leaving his comm device on the ground. In his haste he bumped into one of the table legs jostling loose a mug from above. In a surprising display of hand-eye coordination he caught it before it hit the floor and continued to scoot away from the machine now clumsily trying to squeeze through the cubicle opening.

"This . . . is . . . not . . . good," his own voice echoed in his skull. From far up and away, somewhere in the room, he heard the sound of someone yelping loudly and then the thudding sizzle of laser fire. Klein took the opportunity to leap to his feet and hop lightly towards the opposite exit but he was met with another roboscorpion. He was trapped between two blind, roving roboscorpions armed only with a mug. Turning to the cubicle windows, he saw that the number of roboscorpions in the room had increased somehow.

"Where do they _come_ from?" he thought to himself before glancing from one roboscorpion on his left to the one on his right and back again. Sneering, he tossed the mug as hard and far as he could. It banked off of the wall and fell skittering, drawing laser fire and making the two scorpions he was dealing with turn and face that direction. Deftly, Klein stepped up on the table and hopped through the window opening to land as softly as he could on the other side. That side happened to be a very think stretch of catwalk right over the bumbling sea of robots. Their claws reached up to tap around at his feet, searching for the source of the vibration of his landing, and inside his mind he cursed physics, renounced the scientific method and called Marie Curie a dried up housewife. One pincer had a hold of his shoe and began pulling it off of him. He let it go, watched it snap with a look of sheer hate, which turned to horror as the claw came back to nip and pull at his toes.

"AHA!"

The machine stopped nabbing at his toes. The sound of hundreds of tickity-tack legs on metal stopped. Klein lept when all of the robots clinging to the walls fell and smashed against the ground.

"I did it!" 8 shouted from high above.

"Did what?" Zero yelled, "Tried your best to murder me? Because you certainly tried your best to murder me!"

"That was DALA," Borous bellowed from way up somewhere else, "She was the one who CALLED YOU while you were on the stairs. I saw it with my OWN EYES."

"Don't trust him," Klein yelled back, "We had a plan and he abandoned it to assault 8!"

"The PLAN that was intended to get ME exposed to their laser fire!"

"I still think 8 was trying to kill all of us. That forehead thing? Come on!" Zero added.

"Nonsense! I just shut all of these things down! If I was trying to kill you I'd have just activated the Itchwave device on everyone instead of just Dala! She was stalking Borous! I saw her approaching with her hand under her coat!"

"Yes! She was CALLING ZERO!"

"Oh, by the theory of relativity . . . I called Zero!" Klein hollared, "I was trying to access 8's device to keep him from using it to screw us all over with the sudden reinstatement of roboscorpion vision!"

"We are all goodly creatures!" Dala suddenly appeared in the window of her cubicle, flopped over its edge as if she'd gone boneless, "The univeral beauty of bodies in motion! There is no beginning or end to our cycles of cellular renewal and that . . . is . . . im-mor-tal-ity!"

"What? You were trying to hack my device?"

"Yes! Your stolen Z9, to be precise."

"What, like Klein's stolen Z9?" Dala responded drunkenly, "You gave 8 your stolen Z9, Klein?"

"Shut _up_," Klein roared at her.

"What's going on in here?" Mobius' voice echoed from far down the hallway and everybody immediately scattered running for the door to the X-42 control center like rats in a maze if the walls suddenly lifted. Somehow they all managed to get there at about the same time with Klein making it in last, having been forced to hop-sprint across a vast field of roboscorpions. They made sure the door closed behind them and 8 tried for a moment to activate its electronic locks, which failed, so he followed the rest inside.


	15. Chapter 15

"Excellent," Klein said, "Now, we've got to find the spy, or the source of the brainwashing, or the reason for the X-2 communications blackout within, say, twenty seconds or so."

"Spacious," Zero commented, looking up at the dome they were in, "Exact replica of the Dome. I don't remember this being in X-42 when I took the grand tour once construction was complete."

"Eighteen seconds," Klein said through bared teeth, tapping his wrist.

"What, how am I supposed to know what stuff looks like in a place I've never seen before? If we're screwed, Klein. Screwed. Mobius is coming no matter what. Lets give the place the proper regard before we get vapourised."

"Fourteen se- confound it all, I can't believe I actually agree with you."

They floated over to the tables where Mobius had left out an array of half-assembled and fully-assembled equipment.

"Stunningly tasteful," Dala slurred her words as she picked up a cheap paperweight bust labeled 'Pythagoros' that Mobius had placed next to an odd looking gun, "That forehead. Whoever this was, he was most likely an absolutely stunning male specimen. Nevermind the male pattern baldness. Phrenological survey would suggest he was very good at playwriting and visual composition. Definitely no mathematician. I would know. I am a qualified phreno-lol-igi-calist."

"What's up with her?" Zero whispered to Borous.

"I, er, well, she's . . . on something that is making her BRAIN CELLS perform new and interesting variations upon the theme of THINKING. It SHOULD wear off within a few minutes."

"Python-gorous," she stammered and blinked, "I'm no herpitologist . . . yet, but this man does not resemble a snake."

"What's this?" 8 said as he examined the device she'd found the bust next to, "This looks . . . new."

They gathered around it. The rest of the table was surrounded by scraps of machinery and electronics scattered about. Klein squinted at a large brushed metal cube that had been ripped open and plundered for parts.

"This looks . . . familiar."

He circled it, stroking his beard, before stopping and crouching beside it to read a label on the side out loud,

"Subliminal suggestion box."

All members of the team exchanged glances, except for Dala who was watching her own fingers curl and uncurl with her mouth parted.

"I believe," Zero picked up a long cylindrical device on the table and turned it over in his hands until he found the serial number 000-000-001 on it, "That this is the Cinematrix lens."

8 took the gun-like device in his hands and held it by the grip with his finger off of the trigger,

"I . . . think we've found the brainwashing gun. But, if the gun is here in X-42 where Mobius has been this whole time, where's the spy?"

The sound of someone approaching the control room made them all spin around. It was a pair of feet accompanied by the noise of many electronic legs tapping along, plus someone whistling the 1812 overture.

"Good god," Klein uttered, "Get these things off of the table."

All of them, except Dala who kept rolling her head around on her shoulders as if it were a big balloon, helped sweep the electronics off onto the floor where they crashed and shattered like dishes. Klein flipped the table down and motioned for everyone to crouch behind it. Borous grabbed Dala by the wrist and tugged her behind. She fell to the floor with an annoyed grunt before resuming her head twirling.

"We've got to zap him into complacency," Klein whispered.

"That's horrible!" Zero said, "You want to brainwash Mobius?"

"He's going to murder us, Zero. We're going to _die_ unless we make him not want to, I'll say it again, _murder_ us."

"Klein is CORRECT," Borous said, "Which one of us can program the gun?"

"I can . . . try," 8 said, flipping what he figured was the ON switch. The gun indeed lit up. A little screen flickered on showing a test wave pattern and some garbled output data. 8 fiddled with it, hit some switches, turned some knobs.

"Hurry up," Klein rasped, glancing over the lip of the table, "He's halfway here and he's got a roboscorpion for each of us."

"Trying! Trying!" 8 said as he fiddled with it more, "Okay, 'thought dissemination algorithms.' By Fibbonaci, there's ten thousand of them. Did you see a users manual when we were breaking Mobius' table things?"

"A manual- don't tell me you don't know how it works," Klein said, eyes wide and furious.

"I've never used it before! Lets see, okay, 'presets.' That sounds promising."

"Who's there?" shouted Mobius, "I know you're there!"

They froze, even 8 who had been flicking through a menu.

"N-nobody but the . . . table!" Zero shouted.

"The what?" Mobius said.

"The table! Just . . . the table here!"

"I wonder what it feels like to be LOBOTOMIZED by a laser," Borous pondered to himself.

"I thought I shut your personality module off weeks ago, Table!" Mobius said, chuckling, "Guess I'm getting disorganized, what with this impending nuclear war and X-42 being burglarized and all."

"Uh . . . nope! Still on!" Zero yelled, so stiff with tension his eyes were going bloodshot.

"I'll just have to come turn you back off then. I didn't appreciate those hurtful comments about my penmanship!"

"Hmm," 8 muttered, "What's . . . this?"

"I apologize!" Zero said, "I apologize from the very bottom of my . . . um, feet. My legs. My legs which terminate in feet. Very small, rubber feet. I apologize from the bottom of my little rubber feet."

"How did you get sideways like that?" Mobius asked, sounding suspicious.

"I was . . . sleepy."

"Okay, I think I've got a solution," 8 said, sweat beading up on his forehead.

"Well, I'll just have to come over there, put you right side up and press your off button! Which is actually more of a toggled switch, now that I think about it. No sleep like the dead sleep of an open circuit!"

"Whatever it is, do it!" Klein barked.

"Sic semper temperantia!" 8 shouted with bravery as he rose and fired.

Absolutely nothing happened. The gun made no sound. There was no beam, no indication that the trigger had been pulled. He just stood there pointing it at Mobius, who stood there looking at him surrounded by roboscorpions who weren't looking at anything at all while waving their tails back and forth. Mobius coughed into his fist while 8 looked down at the gun and frowned. The others slowly peeked their heads out from behind the table. Mobius stood in front of them, surrounded by five radscorpions, giving them all a severe look.

"Are you done misquoting Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger at me, 8?"

8 nodded slowly, looking as confused as his colleagues except for Dala whose eyes were shut tight as if she was in pain.

"Well? What's the occasion?" Mobius asked.

"We're here to stop you from killing us all," Zero said.

"Killing you? Why would I do that? And why are you holding the MK29 UMD whilst aiming it at my head? Are you planning to brainwash me?"

8 looked down at the gun again and then up at Mobius before shrugging, "No. I mean, yes, but not any more if you're not planning to kill us."

"I most certainly am not!" Mobius said, "You're the finest group of employable minds living this great nation who aren't already tenured elsewhere! I'd be utterly mad to kill you! Oh, look! My roboscorpions!"

He pointed at the robots tagging along with him, smiled, and then put his hand to his lips,

"How did they get in here? I don't remember telling them to guard this control room. They're supposed to be out assisting with lab security. How is that going, by the way? Lab security? I remember there being some concerns about the lab being not secure, or maybe that was someone inside of the lab being insecure. Possibly you, Zero. Oh, you've found the name tags! I was planning to give them to you in the morning but I suppose now is fine. Er, but yes. Lab security."

Klein, Borous and Zero hesitantly rose from behind the overturned table. Dala remained crouched behind it nursing a terrible pain in her skull.

"Well, we don't KNOW," Borous said, "There HAS been a foreign spy on the loose, and we're unable to get ANY signal from outside the crater besides the SIERRA MADRE RADIO broadcasts."

"Really? Why, that sounds like an issue with X-2. Haven't you gone to look at it, 8?"

"Mobius," Zero said stepping forwards, "Last thing we saw, you were telling us that we were all going to die because X-2 wasn't working properly even though it's actually working perfectly fine but . . . a-a-a-are you saying that you don't remember that X-2 discussion at all?"

"Remember? Why, I hardly remember waking up this morning. In fact, wasn't I just sitting down to have a look at the MK29 UMD model I've just assembled? Isn't that what's in your hands there, 8? Why are you holding it and not me?"

"Well . . . I-" 8 stopped, stared at the machine, and then tapped his chin, "I think it's because you're . . . there and I'm . . . here?"

"This is absurd," Klein groaned, "Mobius, quit playing the fool act and be out with it: you're trying to fool us into a sense of complacency so that you can turn your roboscorpions on us all and laugh as we smoulder into four piles of gullible ash and one pile of genius ash that got put in such a humiliating state of matter by his idiotic co-workers."

"8 . . . would you hand me the Mk29, please?" Mobius said with a frown.

"Ridiculous," Klein sneered, "He lacks the decency to let us all die with our heads screwed on properly."

8, hesitant, handed the gun over to Mobius.

"Wh-" Klein sputtered, "What are you doing?"

"It's okay," 8 said, "I think he's . . . I think it worked."

Mobius took the gun in his hands and inspected its little screen, flipping a scroll wheel with his thumb and pressing a few buttons. After a moment he began nodding.

"Yes, yes. It's all very clear what's going on now. Yes."

"What? What's going on?" Zero asked, looking worried, "Are we doomed? Is that a good 'yes yes' or a bad 'yes yes.' Come on! We're doomed, aren't we."

"Apparently," Mobius said as he stroked his beard, "The first test-fire of the MK29 occurred sometime very late last night. I must not have properly spiked my coffee with the productive sort of stimulants because, as it clearly indicates here, the rewriting waves successfully interfaced with a nervous system and performed their required function flawlessly which was a fairly basic 'unnerved patriotism' template that I'd programmed for civil servants and government office workers not meeting standard quota for security. Oh, what a mess! I left out some key elements in this preset that kept the programming from not snowballing into overcomplicated paranoia. Short-term memory loss was fine, got just the right amount of 'vapid futility in overcoming insurmountable odds' in there. Bah, it would have all been plain as day if the first test subject hadn't accidentally been myself. I need to make the hair trigger less sensitive."

The rest of the scientists stood dumbfounded, mouths open staring at Mobius as he continued muttering to himself.

"Excuse me Dala," he said as he flipped the table back up on its feet. She stumbled to a standing position, gripping the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger.

"Typical," Klein shook his head, arms crossed, looking depressed with frustration, "There are no other words in my vocabulary for this except for . . . for 'typical.' I would need to draft a focus group just to calculate, quantify and then explain with state-of-the-art graphics how typical this situation is."

"So, er, he's fine now?" Zero asked, "He's not brainwashed any more?"

"It would appear NOT," Borous said.

"Quiet," Dala groaned, "I'm suffering from pains in my cranium beyond even a migrane. Which one of you did this to me? I need to know who did this to me."

"Borous," everyone but Borous said in unison.

"Quiet," she repeated while staggering to the nearest chair, "Just . . . lower your voices."

"Mobius, we have an emergency," 8 said. Mobius did not look up, muttering to himself over the rifle on the table about overly sensitive equipment, complaining about the paradoxical state of the unreliability of over-reliability, fiddling with its internals.

"I liked him better brainwashed," Klein grumbled.

"Mobius! Emergency!"

"What? I'm sorry, but I need to make sure this thing is properly functioning. Is it a regular emergency or an urgent emergency? Don't forget the emergency prioritization list we drafted recently: so-called employee 'emergencies,' chemical fires in non-essential facilities and broken plumbing aren't emergencies," said Mobius, absentmindedly fishing a box of mentats out of his pocket and popping one into his mouth.

"The Chinese have planned a tactical thermonuclear strike for sometime tonight and we can't get outside radio signals."

Mobius looked up from his project, "The Chinese did . . . what?"

"They're bombing us. We can't get any radio signals from outside except for the Sierra Madre, like we said. We have no clue when their strike is going to land."

"Bombing us? Bombing us! That's . . . incredible! And horrible! Get to X-2! Fix the reciever!"

"It's not broken!"

"Then what's the problem?" Mobius shouted again, throwing his arms up and scattering mentats all over the floor.

"X-42's systems are somehow remotely interfering with the X-2 decryption codecs! We're flying blind and it's all your brainwashed self's fault!"

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"Because, you dubiously self-purported 'genius,' you were BRAINWASHED," Klein yelled.

"Stop shouting," Dala moaned, her face in her palms.

"Good heavens," Mobius exhaled, rushing over to a monitor bank. He began punching at keys and making adjustments to dials, bringing up reams and reams of code on screen. Lips moving as if talking to himself he scanned through line after line as the rest of the team crowded around behind him, except for Dala who was still sitting in her chair suffering.

"Bypass codes . . . roboscorpion relay channels . . . scrap recombination protocols . . ." Mobius muttered to himself, "Codecs, codecs, aha! Yes! Wow, that was quite deft and clever of me wasn't it? Wiped every codec except for the one place that we wouldn't get any meaningful information from. Should be as simple as a copy and paste ordeal . . ."

"Wow, you've got codecs reaching back to 1995 here," 8 commented.

"1961, to be precise: 7094's Daisy Hall recording. Neither here nor there if we're all dead,"

He tapped a few keys, made a mass selection on the command line, typed in a replacement and hit a button.

"Okay. 8, I see you've got a repurposed Z9 there," Mobius said.

"Yes," Klein hissed, "That is . . . what _that_ is."

"I'm not going to be picky at a time like this. Open up radio signal to 741.89 or 741.88, I can't remember which, and patch it in to the PA system."

8 fussed with his machine, dialing the frequency and doing as told. Moments later a screeching alarm noise began blaring from all around, making Dala clap her hands over her ears and fall to the floor.

"THIS IS NOT A TEST," a severe male voice bleated, "THIS IS NOT A TEST. NUCLEAR STRIKE IMMINENT. THIS IS NOT A TEST. ALL VAULT-TEC EMPLOYEES TOPSIDE ARE BEING ORDERED TO REPORT TO THEIR APPOINTED STATIONS AT THEIR ASSIGNED VAULT. THIS IS NOT A TEST. PLEASE HAVE YOUR VAULT-TEC PASS OR EMPLOYEE ID ON HAND AND LINE UP IN AN ORDERLY FASHION. THIS IS NOT A TEST. ETA TO IMPACT AS FOLLOWS; EASTERN STANDARD TIME, 15 MINUTES AND 49 SECONDS. CENTRAL STANDARD TIME INCLUDING ARIZONA: 18 MINUTES AND 47 SECONDS. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: 14 MINUTES AND 45 SECONDS."

Everyone literally leapt into the air, even Mobius. Dala sprang from the floor in spite of her splitting headache and began running for the exit door, followed by the rest shouting things like "Get the Securitrons indoors!" "Ration the Cram!" "We're all going to die if you people keep stepping on my toes!" and "UN-RELEASE THE HOUNDS." They exited, fled up the path from the X-42 entrance, leapt in the traincar and sped to the Dome.


	16. Chapter 16

"Calibrating," 8 shouted as he punched in keys at his station. Each key punch made the waveform pattern on his monitor wobble and wiggle slightly differently as the Verbal Assault Cannon began its warm-up routines. The Dome rumbled a bit as it tested out a coughing pattern followed by some mumbling and brief Jazz scatting. Overhead the Sierra Madre music was still playing in between shouted alerts from the Department of Defence emergency broadcast station.

"FETCH-AND-RETRIEVAL is going into effect," Borous shouted. His monitors showed the various Cyberdogs he'd made that day flooding across the crater, led by Gabe, performing various tasks: retrieving foodstuffs, scavenging lightweight objects and taking their last attempt to hunt down the spy wherever he was. Dogs scampered in and out of the Dome, through the open doors, up to the Sink and through the Break Room and down to basement storage and back out again carrying prepackaged goods, energy cells, light weaponry, errata.

"Commencing EMP hardening," Dala said from behind her welding helmet. Her headache was gone but, as Borous had advised, could be light-activated. Her station's monitors and LCDs were turned up so bright that they glowed even in the already harsh ambient lighting of the room. Lab by lab, she shut down and isolated vulnerable systems. The Heracles reactor's EMP shielding was put into effect. The X-13 stealth labs were completely shut down. X-2 was cut to a minimum: ingoing and outgoing signals only along with the basic intraweb of P2P communications and walking eye comm web. X-8 went dark. The (electricity demands but more sciency) of Big MT dipped so low that the reactor was only being taxed to 2% of its potential. The Verbal Assault Cannon, coincidentally, would require 98% of its potential electrical output to produce a full diversional blast in the form of whatever they put through the microphone.

"Do we have a phrase ready?" asked Zero. Nobody responded at first, so he raised his voice and asked again, "Do we have a PHRASE ready?"

"Quiet down," Klein replied, holding his chin in thought as he gazed at his station's screens, "I'm inside Vault-Tec security watching them herd the last of the ants into their high-school science project. I believe this is the vault that's designed to not seal properly. I can't imagine what data they're hoping to derive from watching a bunch of nitwits glow in the dark, puzzled as to why they're all . . . glowing in the dark."

"We don't have a phrase," Zero said with a sigh, "This isn't going to end well if we don't have a phrase."

"We don't need a phrase," Klein yelled, "Any consistent pattern of the human voice running at a frequency of more than 48 fricatives per minute will produce the magnitude of sound waves necessary to deflect an incoming salvo of missiles. Er, according to 8."

"But . . . you know what's going to happen. I know exactly what's going to happen," Zero complained, "It's going to be time to get on the mic and yell into the microphone and deflect all of the missiles just like that and everyone's going to want to say the perfect 'thing' and we're all going to choke and nobody is going to say anything in time. That's what's going to happen. Believe me, I've sat through countless graduation speeches in my day at countless . . . well, okay. Five. _Five_ graduation speeches. And every time someone got up there without pre-prepared notes, what happened? They choked."

"If one of us 'chokes' I'll tape the microphone to their head and make them calculate Pi with a cattle prod. I've got one around here somewhere, I believe. Hopefully not the miltiary-strength model. That would make it, er, hard to calculate."

The entire Dome vibrated. It wasn't the usual sort of shaking or rattling that occurred around the Dome when something catastrophic happened but a very smooth thrumming vibration. Everyone's teeth rattled like noisemakers. The dogs leapt into the air, growled, barked and scattered in all directions.

"Verbal Assault Cannon online!" 8 shouted triumphantly, "Now, we just need to wait for the missiles to get in range."

"ETA TEN MINUTES AND COUNTING."

Two securitrons came wheeling into the room carrying armfuls of teddy bears, followed by a third whose tire was deflating and whose right half looked like it had been chewed off. They deposited the teddy bears in a big pile next to Dala who turned to them and began wagging her finger,

"No. Not here. Not here at all. Take those into my room for safekeeping."

"I thought I told those securitrons to run diagnostics on the VAC sonic funneling tube," 8 said, looking worried, "I'm not entirely certain that the Constructotrons are quick enough to get the job done. You've got them, what, gathering teddy bears?"

"I wasn't aware that you'd been using these securitrons for your own personal tasks," Dala was speaking, muffled by her helmet, through 8's terminal via microphone instead of shouting, "The collection of what few necessary goods still remaining at Higgs is an important one."

"More important than making sure the turret works?" 8 said, face full of skepticism, "I'm requisitioning them now, thank you. You have enough teddy bears."

"I have far too few. My Adonis is still missing. I am still relying on Borous' canine search teams to locate it. Were my Adonis to have absconded, possibly stolen by a saboteur which we still have not caught, I would require copious amounts of teddy bears in order to make it through the ordeal without resorting to invasive surgical experimentation on any nearby life forms. I am under a great deal of . . . stress. My withered conscience cannot tolerate much more pressure on its frail walls and protections."

"Get out of here," 8 yelled to the securitrons as he input their orders directly. They did so, the damaged one limping along behind the others.

"Don't tell all of them to go work on that thing. I've got one of them on task," Zero said.

"What, what kind of task?" 8 asked.

"Fetching something Mobius needed from my lab. Said it was urgent. A 'recepticle' or something."

"Wait, Zero, you've been telling them to go fetch things too?" Dala asked.

"Of course. Actually, I was the one who programmed them to not log previous orders in their memory banks in the first place. Wait, you guys have been using _those_ securitrons?"

"Which securitrons did you think we were using?"

"Other securitrons! Not my securitrons! No wonder it took me all afternoon to get my security system up and running!"

"That was you wearing that helmet then, Zero?" Dala asked.

"How did you . . . hey! You were peeking around in their memory banks!"

"This . . . is not good," she said, "If those securitrons were being used by all three of us in the course of carrying out our various tasks then the spy could also have been using them for his own purposes. Such as, say, stealing a precious Adonis."

"I thought that the spy was Mobius," Zero said, "I mean, wasn't that the brainwashing telling us we'd been infiltrated?"

"As a QUALIFIED EXPERT in the field of hunting down and SYMBOLICALLY burning COMMUNISTS at the SYMBOLIC STAKE," Borous yelled from across the room "Heed my words when I say: NEVER doubt the possible presence of a spy once alerted, no matter HOW DUBIOUS the source information may be. Dubious information is often the MOST TRUSTWORTHY. Science has proven this TIME and TIME again."

"So we still have a spy? Where? Who?" Zero looked around the room.

"I've got the DOGS on that," Borous said, "Still NO evidence, but that doesn't mean that there IS no evidence. Evidence must be OBSERVED first, and without OBSERVING for evidence, no evidence can come to light. BESIDES, Dala said she'd seen a CHINAMAN stealing CRAM or something this morning and I'm still convinced that this CHINAMAN is ON THE LOOSE. STEALING CRAM."

Mobius returned with a severe look on his face, arms crossed.

"I really would have appreciated you all taking better care of Beedle than you did," he said grimly, "The sort of condition he's in now really shows a lack of proper consideration for correctly following our work safety and health regulations."

"I thought we threw those out when we finally decided to make all of our employees sign wavers," Klein said, distracted by clicking through Vault security cameras, "Oh look at that! Water chips. Thousands of them. That's rich. Perhaps they'll all resort to licking rocks for moisture. That's scientific, isn't it? I feel like I'm watching . . . oh what do they call it? 'Tele-vision?' How plebian."

"Well, yes. But the honour system is always in effect," Mobius said, "He could have come to much more serious harm than he already has. His bodily well-being is very important to me."

"Did you get that recepticle I had sent over?" Zero asked.

"Why yes! Thank you, Zero. It is 'Zero,' isn't it? Not O? I mean, I remember there not being a slash on the name tag I'd created."

"Zero! Zero, Zero, Zero! Always Zero! Zee-ro!"

"Zero then. Yes, Beedle is safe and stabilized," Mobius said, "We'll have to figure out what to do with him once we're-"

A deep, thudding explosion caused the Dome to rattle a little, followed by two smaller thumping sounds from far off.

"Which one of you did that?" Mobius asked.

"Not me," Zero said, "I don't even have a lab anymore. Just a basement full of loose screws."

"That explosion sounded . . . unusual. And unexpected," Dala said, "Normally when something explodes, one of us takes immediate responsibility for it."

"Except for Y-0," Zero smirked.

"Puppets?" Klein yelled, throwing his hands up, "They've got a man alone in a vault with nothing but puppets. They get _paid_ to come up with this stuff? Oh, I hope he tries putting them on."

"I've got a walking eye I can send in," 8 said, "It looks like it came from up on the ridge near X-2. No damage to the lab, thankfully, just some sort of disturbance in the caves up there. Maybe one of us left, uh, something in there? Anybody? Messing about in the caves?"

"Nope."

"Nuh-uh."

"They creep me out, to be honest," Zero said.

"I'm sending a walking eye," 8 announced.

"Have we done anything with the subjects at Little Yangze?" Klein asked, his attention suddenly no longer on Vault-Tec, "Are they just sitting out there?"

"They're not going anywhere," 8 said, distracted, "Cozy in their cots."

"Where would we put them?" Dala asked, "Your bedroom, Klein?"

"It's a waste to let them get incinerated. After these bombs hit we're going to be obscenely short on test subjects."

"Find a place to store them, Klein, within the next five minutes and we'll consider it. They're unsurprisingly low on our list of important things right now," Mobius said.

Klein abandoned his station and jogged down the hallway out of the Dome into the hallways, down a corridor and into a storage closet where he felt around in the dark for a light switch. Once he'd found it, he felt around in the air for a few moments before his hands landed on something cloaked and invisible. He searched around, unplugged something, and a securitron came crackling into view an instant later. It powered up, its screen flickered on.

"Securitron model PDQ-88b reporting," it barked.

"Head to Little Yangze," Klein said in a rush, "Locate subject five. That's subject F-I-V-E, five, okay? Grab him, physically pick him up, and take him to . . . to . . . oh by the three laws of motion, they've still got collars on. Okay, plan B. Always a plan B. Get a radiation suit. Get our best one, in fact. Take it there. Point your gun at him, either gun. The laser gun, how about? Tell him in . . . Chinese? Do you things even speak Chinese? You must. How else would you taunt enemy soldiers upon an invasion? Please tell me you speak Chinese. No miscommunications here."

"_Shi_" it grumbled.

"I assume that means 'yes.' Tell him to wear this or he'll be shot to death on the spot. If he doesn't wear it, shoot at him. Don't shoot him, just _at_ him, until he wears it. Tell him to wear it, get inside, pile mattresses on top of himself, whatever it takes. Just, make sure he has it on. Then tell him that he needs to hand to you the 'Bai-Chu.' Return that object, the 'Bai-Chu,' to me. Go! Go!"

It went.

"ETA FIVE MINUTES," the intercom barked as soon as Klein returned to the room.

"Do we have a visual on their trajectory?" Mobius shouted.

"Not yet. Still out of range. No exact numbers on them either," 8 said, "Still trying to boost the X-2's rangefinder with every trick in my book. I suspect they may have cloaked the missiles."

"Cloaked them?" Klein scoffed as he returned to his station, "What, so we can't fling rocks at them from the roof? Ridiculous."

"General radiation cloaking. STA defences can't use laser-sighting to track them. Our solution, thankfully, doesn't require mundane and falliable system such as infared scanning, gamma-ray decay tracking or solar ray refraction calculation. We've got the raw power of sound on our side!"

"Never to be UNDERESTIMATED. I know that power ALL TOO WELL."

Gabe came running in with a herd of dogs in tow. They skittered to a halt, panting, and stared directly at Borous. Gabe towered over the rest, tongue flopped out.

"GABE. My BOY."

"He's dispensing his fluids all over the floor," Klein sneered, "Instead of someone else's."

"Have you found the SPY, boy? HAVE YOU?"

Gabe whined and whimpered, cocking his head to one side. He ran in a little circle, hopped up and down, tucked his tail between his legs, drooled some more.

"Well boy? HAVE YOU? You HAVEN'T, have you?"

"WOOF!"

Klein kept pinging his securitron for an update on its progress, watching it as a little blinking light on an overlay map of the crater. It was only halfway to Yangzte.

"ETA FOUR MINUTES AND FIFTEEN SECONDS."

"Systems completely safe," Dala declared, "EMP shielding in full effect. The Dome is secure. All secondary and teritary systems are offline."

"Is that why the COFFEE MAKER isn't taking remote commands?" Borous said.

"Yes, because _someone_ said we didn't have it in the budget to purchase one of the top-of-the-line surge-protected space station models. An Orbit-Mate 150, for instance. Hell, even a cut-rate Hubble Jitterbrew 3200," Klein said, glaring over his shoulder at Mobius.

"It was that or supply power to X-12 for the month," Mobius replied as he keyed in something on his phone, "Doesn't matter. I'll have the Sink Central Intelligence manufacture us some Salient & Nuka. Ooh, I should get the big screen set up for the show."

"The show?" Zero asked.

"The atomic show! We've all seen our share of atomic tests, naturally, but can any of you say that you've seen a full salvo of Chinese atomic weaponry make contact with American soil in real time?"

"I have!" Zero said, raising his hand. "Holographic projections of possible nuclear outcomes don't count!"

Zero lowered his hand.

"We already have an impressively-sized screen to which you regularly send broadcasts from X-42 in the course of your work," Dala said.

"Not big enough!" Mobius said, "We need something that can allow us to watch the 80 or so most crucial ground zeroes around the world simultaenously while enjoying a cool refreshment.. That'll require not just a big screen, but my own patented Big Screen XK229. Should plug right into the ceiling up there once I get my roboscorpions in here to assemble it."

"ETA THREE MINUTES AND THIRTY SECONDS."

"Go and REST your weary tongues," Borous said to the throng of dogs, "You've DESERVED IT, in spite of having found NOTHING of note ALL DAY."

"That is correct, Borous. They have not yet located my Adonis. With nuclear fire just moments from striking the earth, locating it once and for all is paramount. Send them back out. Have them find it."

"TOO RISKY. What if they find a BALL or a STICK? They'll be CHASING EACH OTHER in CIRCLES all the way to their DEATHS."

"If my Adonis is not found, I will hold you and your dogs personally responsible. Gabe is part of the security team. You are in charge of Gabe. That makes you the unofficial head of security. You have not located a priceless stolen piece of science. You will be held accountable for that if it is not found."

Borous looked at her masked face sternly, ran a hand over his bald head and then turned back to the dogs,

"Go! ONWARDS, Gabe. ONWARDS FOR YOUR FINAL SWEEP," Borous bellowed as the dogs streamed out of the room, "Locate the STATUE that embodies all of the most APPEALING QUALITIES of your EARTHLY MASTERS."

"Come on, come on," Klein said under his breath. The securitron seemed to be confused. It was lingering around Yangze, circling it and circling it again.

"Surely it can't be confused by how to hollar at someone through a cyclone fence. Just . . . yell at him the instructions. Just. Yell. This is _excruciating_."

Several roboscorpions came tip-tapping in carrying things between their pincers. Mobius stood in the middle of the room watching them as they slowly climbed the walls of the Dome to assemble around two points up near the ceiling. Using their tails as laser drills they began installing the framework of something long and tubular.

"How many minutes before impact do we need to initiate the verbal assault?" Zero asked, wiping sweat off of his brow as he keyed something in.

"Ten seconds to impact should do it," 8 said, "Any sooner and the waves will disperse too soon to have the proper effect. Any later and the heat of the blast will give the Dome an impressive new skylight."

"ETA TWO MINUTES AND THIRTY SECONDS."

"A little to the left," Mobius shouted as his helpers started hooking up some kind massive rolled material to the cylindrical base they'd managed to put together quite rapidly. Zero left the room at Mobius' request. Dala was monitoring the frentic search patterns of the dogs intently through her headache-screening mask.

"What are you doing, you miserable piece of pirated tech?" Klein fumed, "Get the prototype. Bring it back. Not. Complicated."

He tried sending it a redundant set of orders just in case its runtimes had gotten themselves looped or confused, then wiped the primary set he'd given verbally, and it still continued to follow routine patterns.

"Everyone!" Mobius declared, "Turn and behold our newest and most important piece of apocalypse-viewing technology: the Big Screen XK229!"

Everyone except for Klein did so. As they watched a holographic overlay literally unfurled before their eyes, a liquid sheet of light. It uncurled itself, rippled with waves of colours, and then quickly snapped taut to form a rectangular screen occupying the entire back wall of the Dome. It was large enough to stretch from one end to the other, and the bottom of the screen hung a man's height above the dome floor. On screen a testing pattern with Mobius' face at the center whirled in great circles.

"Feast your eyes on the most impressive audiovisual device ever constructed within the past 48 hours! Using technology solely derived from the Sierra Madre contract hologram technology, I have created a television screen far more impressive than what even the most try-hard consumer could attempt to call 'first-class.' Behold its many superfluously implemented features!"

"Don't flatter me!" Zero said as he re-entered the room carrying a tray of green, fizzy drinks, "That holoprojection thing wasn't that impressive. Running on brains? _So_ 2056. It wasn't even fish-proofed."

"What fish? I was referring to my Big Screen XK229," Mobius gestured up for Zero's benefit.

"You weren't talking about my . . . my lab security project?" Zero asked, looking confused.

"Your what? Security what?"

"My . . . oh, nevermind. You blew it up anyway," Zero sighed as he proceeded to hand drinks all around. Klein ignored his, still glaring intently at his wayward robot.

"Why thank you," Mobius licked his lips post-sip, "Now, what was I going on about? Aha! The Big Screen XK229 and its many varied features! Including the most significant of them: the full-resolution mosaic effect with locational and situational volume control!"

Pressing a few buttons on a remote he'd produced from his jacket, they watched as the screen flickered into a gigantic grid showing at least 80 video feeds from various places around the planet: the Lucky 38 at Las Vegas, the strange and jagged Paris skyline, a view from Mt. Fuji, the Hollywood Sign, the Sears Tower, a dark lonesome highway somewhere, Hopeville and Ashton, the ruins of Jerusalem, Cape Town, Sydney, an Antarctic research post, New York, Belgrade, a desolate Berlin, Big Ben, Montreal, a snow-swept tundra, Moscow, Athens, a hacked Hong Kong security camera, Singapore, Cairo, the ruins of Tel Aviv, the front lines in Anchorage.

"ETA ONE MINUTE AND THIRTY SECONDS."

"Everyone to your stations! Final chance for physical data storage for anything you've developed or compiled for the day!"

"Your canines are returning, Borous," Dala seethed underneath her mask, "I believe they are empty handed."

"They are but DOGS. They're not MIRACLE WORKERS, Dala. Your project must have simply, in the END, been MISPLACED."

"I do not misplace projects. Do you simply leave your vital data on holotape to be kicked underneath the couch? It was stolen. Your security team is a failure."

"Guys, something's wrong with the database," Zero said.

"FAILURE, you say? Then WHY have they managed to retrieve every single OTHER vital piece of equipment? You can CHECK equipment storage. EVERYTHING is there. EVERYTHING is accounted for. Even your absurd attempts at creating CYBERNETIC HAIR."

"That was an entirely successful project. 9 out of 10 happily married wives couldn't tell that it wasn't their husbands' real hair until it began moving of its own accord."

"Guys, something's very wrong with our database," Zero warned again.

"Are the rest of you having issues finding, well, anything with your name on it?" 8 asked.

"YES!" Klein shouted as the robot began making its way back towards the Dome.

"I thought so," 8 muttered, "Dala, Borous, can you put your irrelevant argument on hold and try scanning the database for anything you've data-stamped as yours?"

"Checking."

"I as WELL."

" . . . nothing."

"Where is my GENE-BANKING data? I . . . I had it in the PROPER subdirectory structures!"

"Perhaps your cyberdogs misplaced it," snarled Dala.

At that moment they came all scuttling in, panting, empty-pawed. Borous shooed them off down a corridor with a shout and a flick of his wrist.

"Klein? Anything?"

"Ha ha! Excellent! Just in time!" Klein stated with a triumphant grin, "Everything is going superb! It's mine! It's still mine!"

"What's yours?" Zero asked, suspicious.

"Where are those drinks?" Klein asked, looking around before he found the tumbler resting by his elbow and took as sip, "Ahh, salient and Nuka. A colloid worthy of victory."

"Klein," Zero's voice rose as he ticky-tacked on the keys of his console, "Klein, I'm seeing a lot of new entries under your name here."

"ETA ONE MINUTE."

"Klein," Zero looked up at him, "Why is . . . everything we've developed over the past two days in your directory?"

"What?" Dala, Borous and 8 exclaimed in unison.

"Check for your project data, but this time cross-reference it with Klein's data stamp."

The three of them typed furiously at their keyboards for a few moments. In the middle of the room Mobius stared up at his novelty-huge screen and said, "Needs more doohickeys."

"The CYBERDOG PROJECT," Borous bellowed.

"The verbal assault cannon!" 8 gasped.

"My . . . reference photographs," Dala uttered.

"Jeffy's tank," Zero sneered.

"What?" Klein stared back at them noncommittally while holding the tumbler with his fingertips, "All products of my Idea-o-logical oversight. None of it would have been completed without me around to manage the flow of ideas. Besides, they're our discoveries aren't they? I'm just giving named credit to the things that I'm ultimately responsible for."

"They're _our_ projects!" Zero shouted, "Jeffy's tank is the only thing I've managed to construct in . . . well, ever!"

"And it's nice to see that you've gotten around to performing basic, entry-level science now that you're part of the most elite research group this side of the Mississippi. A fish-tank, Zero? The height of your ability to perform science in the name of this facility was a . . . a fish containment unit? You're right, I should have made an exception for it."

"Klein, reverse this. I'll tell them the truth about the Z9. The whole truth," Dala warned.

"Just try. All proof that it's mine and mine alone is on its way here right now."

"You stole the Z9 from the Chinese, Klein. You didn't even touch it once. You're a _fraud_."

"Prove it."

"ETA FOURTY SECONDS."

"Reverse it!" Zero yelled.

"Reverse what? I'm just preserving the title of 'responsibility holder' for these various projects on the proper shoulders: mine! Who kept you all motivated while Mobius was blindsided by brainwashing? Me! I practically run Big MT!"

"You don't do anything except for sit and yell at us to come up with smarter ideas!"

"Exactly! How else are you going to fabricate ideas? Molecular recombination?"

"ETA THIRTY SECONDS."

"I hate you! I wish I'd never taken this postion!" Zero screamed as alarms blared and Mobius shouted "Come over here and watch! It's almost about to happen!"

"I can arrange that. I really can," Klein smirked, "Unfortunately we have no other expert on making machines malfunction. All of our other employees are trained to actually _build_ them."

8's terminal began buzzing.

"The walking eyes! They've found the definitive source of that explosion up in the caves! Patching through . . . oh. Oh my. Oh . . . my."

"What? What is it?"

"ETA TWENTY SECONDS."

"Toasters."

"What?"

"Those toasters exploded. The ones that the technician had been piling up in the caves. They tore a hole right through the side of the crater wall, underneath the AOE of the radar fence. Wait, one second . . ."

8's eyes widened.

"That wasn't a technician up there."

"ETA FIFTEEN SECONDS."

"Well then," Klein said, "Who was it? Nobel's ghost?"

"I . . . believe I've found our communist spy. It was one of our subjects from Little Yangze."

"What," Klein said, not asking but stating, eyes popping out of his skull.

"I said," 8 pressed a button on his console and a video feed popped up on Klein's monitor bank, "It was one of our subjects at Little Yangze."

Klein saw, in plain view, exactly what 8 was talking about. The walking eye was at full zoom standing at the lip of the crater gazing out across the desert tracking a man. That man was wearing a technician's uniform but, even seen from behind, was clearly Chinese. Underneath his arm was the prototype Z9.

"ETA TEN SECONDS."

What followed was later recalled by all parties involved as having happened in slow motion, as if underwater. Mobius declared to the room, his mouth moving in slow syllables, "Unleash the verbal assault!" At that moment Klein dropped his glass. Being made of scientifically reinforced Dura-flex clear ceramic it did not break but bounced across the ground to eventually rest beside Borous' feet, drawing his attention to Klein and leading him to wave to Zero and 8. Dala had seen Klein begin to suck in air the moment that 8 had said the word 'Yangze' and, while flinging her mask off, dove for the Verbal Assault Cannon transmitter. Grabbing it, she thumbed the button and held it up to Klein's face. Zero, 8 and Borous' fingers flew to their ears in anticipation of what was to follow:

"!"

Mobius' Big Screen XK229 lit up with nuclear fire. For a moment the Dome was filled with a blinding light. Only Mobius contined to watch the screens, his eyeglass lenses having turned opaque, as the light flickered and faded into a particular shade of orange-red that cannot be found anywhere in nature, but only in mankind's many amusingly titled colour wheels with the label of "nuclear fire." Every screen bled that colour as the Think Tank watched the mushroom clouds form. Something was raining down on the Dome making a terrible scraping and clanging racket. Klein fell to his knees, every screen showing the same thing from 80 different horrifying angles, before they all cut to hissing white noise as the EMP blast struck each camera down in turn.

Klein panted, out of breath, his hands grasping at the floor finding no grip. Borous came and put a hand on his shoulder.

"CHEER UP, Klein. You've got NOTHING to be so sad about. Look," he pointed to the 80 screens worth of static, "It's just THE END OF THE WORLD."


	17. Chapter 17

Down a hallway, fourth automatic door on the left, in the small and rectangular room known as the Think Tank Annex, also known as the Break Room, the air smelled strongly of coffee and ozone. The Dome's Cleanco-Brand Hyperfiltration System (Mobius' design) could scrub the air of all poisons, radiation-ferrying dust and grit, but it couldn't wash out the smell of a burned world.

"Exterior reports?" 8 asked.

"Cloudy. Chance of rain," Zero replied.

"How many operational cameras do we have?" Dala.

"Three. EMP shielding failed on seven of them."

"I'll clean it up AFTERWARDS," Borous said into his communicator.

"Does this taste funny to you?" Zero.

"What, the coffee?" 8.

"Yeah."

"No."

"Did you add any of this, uh, mentat powder?" Zero asked, gesturing towards a petri dish full of white dust sitting in the middle of the table.

"Took it black."

"That's SUGARLESS," Borous said before turning back to his comm device and saying, "I didn't have TIME to HOUSEBREAK them. Don't we have ROBOTS for things like this?"

"Offline," Zero.

"We have NO robotical assistance?"

"Should be available once the dust clears up a bit. Weather control station's on it," 8 said as he held something that looked like a tape recorder up to his ear, "Nice subrange on those nuclear detonations. Anyone else want to hear this excellent field recording of them?"

"Sugarless?" Zero grimaced as he stared into his cup, "Who in their right mind would give us diet mentat sweetener?"

"The health conscious," Dala sighed, staring at the ceiling.

"Hel-lo! Totally tastes funny! And doesn't this cause cerebral calcification?"

"I PREFER the taste," Borous frowned.

"Cerebral calcification?" 8 asked.

"Only test subjects routinely exposed to two hundred times the daily recommended dose of sugarless mentat over a period of four weeks showed any signs of brain calcification," Dala said, "And the Mandelbrot patterns it formed had a remarkable aesthetic."

"Not convincing me," Zero pushed his mug away with distaste.

"A shame. You'll never have a beautiful mind."

Klein, arms crossed, sat staring at nothing. His labeled mug sat empty.

"Yes. YES. MOST DEFINITELY. I simply CANNOT WAIT," Borous was saying into his comm phone thingy, "Absolutely WITHOUT A DOUBT. No. YES. No. No. Yes. ABSOLUTELY. YES."

And hung up.

"Mobius is RETURNING with LUNCH. I told him you all were perfectly FINE with a MIXED FRUIT and CRAM platter."

"This is the future," Zero shook his head, "Cram, every day. Cram for breakfast, Cram for lunch, Cram for dinner. Cram with . . . salient green, if we're lucky."

"Atmospheric conditioning is at 52%. Visibility returning shortly," 8 said with a satisfied glance around the table.

"And to THINK: they LAUGHED when we said we could CONTROL THE WEATHER. Well who's laughing NOW, you so-called 'Union of _Televised Meteorologists_?' Nothing but modern day NOSTRADAMUSES."

"He'd forever lost," Dala said wistfully, "Somewhere out there, he's lonely and glowing with filthy radiation."

"Hey cheer up Dala," Zero offered, "At least we know the Chinese didn't steal your statue. They stole Klein's thing, the thing he originally stole. Right? Isn't that how it went? Someone, uh, fill me on that. I get the feeling I don't quite have the full story on why Klein is so upset about that chinaman escaping. I mean, besides the basic fact that he escaped which shouldn't have happend. How did he even get out of there? Didn't he have a collar on? Aren't those supposed to be locked up with totally uncrackable state-of-the-art electronic encryption?"

Klein fired hot rays of death out of his eyes at Zero.

"Guess I shouldn't be surprised if that's what it was. I know Klein likes to steal things. He stole all of our ideas just, like, an hour ago."

"Salutations, everyone!" Mobius declared as he swept into the room, "Not only have I managed to set up an encoding algorithm to undo all of Klein's tampering with our trademarks, dismantled the Big Screen for safekeeping in storage _and_ prepared a delicious snack courtesy of the Biological Research Station, but I've got an even bigger surprise to show everyone!"

He clapped his hands twice and Beedle entered the room. More specifically, Beedle's brain entered the room. It was suspended in a giant fishbowl filled with lime green gel, Zero's own fish tank which had formerly housed Jeffy, but now floating with the assistance of repulsor lifts wired into to two large tesla coils that stuck out from either side of the tank. Three screens jutted out on three former arms, now articulated stalks, and on these screens were two eyeballs and a stylized human mouth. It hovered before them for a moment, balancing a tray two screens, before extending them towards the table. Everyone backed away in surprise as it did so without warning and the tray flopped right off of the screens onto the ground scattering slices of banana yucca and processed meat everywhere.

"Oh no! Seems I'm not quite used to these newfangled . . . rrrm, uh, appendages," Beedle's voice buzzed.

"I, uh," Zero said, bewildered, "Well . . . nice to see you're, uh, up and . . . about."

"Mobius, this is borderline SORCERY," Borous said, raising his hands to his scalp.

"I know! Quite remarkable, isn't it? Perfect brain storage if you ask me. Still cognizant, still capable of providing useful information! None of those pesky biological functions around to force various types of 'break:' restroom, cigarette, coffee. None of it! Chemical relay tubes pump everything the brain needs right into the bio-gel. With enough bio-gel Beedle could concievably exist here at the Dome in this state, well, forever!"

Klein's face fell into the palms of his hands.

"Have any of you been privileged enough to hear the myriad reasons why Ankylosauria were exclusively herbavores?"

"Thank you, Beedle. Thank you," Mobius smiled and nodded, "We've got a meeting here to finish up. Go back and continue that discussion you were having with the prototype Toaster intelligence I scraped from Jeffy. The limits to his capacity for unfathomable and impatient rage need to be tested."

"Up and away!" Beedle said as he turned, slamming his chassis into the door frame four or five times in an attempt to leave before finally knocking the Periodic Table calendar off of the wall, slipping out and then banging his way down the hall towards the Sink.

"In all honesty," Mobius said, his tone suddenly somber, "I had to recycle Jeffy's bio-gel reserves to make it all work since we're unable to produce it ourselves at the moment, so 'forever' isn't a very conservative estimate. He'll rapidly go senile using the dirty gel but it can't be helped. Thankfully his body was recovered mostly intact, which was of course my primary concern besides the prospect of losing one of the finest minds of the topic of prehistoric fauna. Are you all enjoying the diet mentat sweetener?"

"Zero doesn't like it," Dala said.

"Tastes funny," he nodded.

"Well it was all we had left," Mobius shrugged, "I can't access my personal stash at X-42 for now, so, get used to the idea of routine biopsies checking for fractal misfolded protiens in all of your brains until we're able to manufacture our own. That is, until Med-Tek is up and running again."

Everyone laughed, except for Klein who just raised his head from out of his hands and resumed staring into space.

"Okay, okay. Come now. All kidding aside, just about the entire remaining population of the planet Earth is really quite doomed," Mobius said as he suppressed further giggles, "Now, on to more important things: do we have visual?"

"Just about," 8 said as he fiddled with his datapad which was hooked up to his Z9 Knobulator whatchamacallit, "Looks like we've got passable signal strength from our functioning cameras and a pretty thin, but present, sattelite contact feed. Fuzzy, barely there, but proof we're not totally blind. Lets have a look outside."

8 put his pad on the table and everyone except Klein crowded around. The landscape was caked with red dust, winds visibly blowing grit and sand everywhere, but the crater looked largely unchanged. The gigantic rubber lips from the Verbal Assault Cannon lay banked by dust near the path to the front doors of the Dome. Everywhere scraps and pieces of dismantled vehicles, laboratories and machines were half-buried in the accumulating sand.

"Shook itself to pieces," 8 nodded, "Knew it would happen. The force needed to redirect those missiles was far too much for such a messy construction job."

"WHERE did the nuclear devices STRIKE in the end?" Borous asked.

"Looks like . . . some hundred miles off-course. Nothing major was hit. No clue how Vegas fared. Won't know for a while yet."

"Bet it's a big hole shaped like House's stupid waxed fringe," Zero smiled to himself.

"How about sattelite imagery?" Dala asked.

"Let's have a look."

The screen was completely dark.

"That's odd," 8 muttered to himself, "We're seeing exactly what the sattelite is seeing. Connection isn't strong but it's there. Lets try panning out."

Something was happening as 8 rapidly zoomed the lens back. Greys and blacks swarmed across the screen. Soon the edges of a blurred Earth could be made out through the static. Something large, a dark smudge, seemed to be blocking it as the camera panned back, back, back. A huge shape was in the way of the sattelite's primary lens.

"What . . . is that? It's like there's something . . . floating in the way. Asteroid of some sort, or . . . what?" 8 fiddled with his knobs trying to get a better focus, "It's got a funny shape."

"Is that what I think it is?" Zero pointed to the screen.

"What? What do you think it is?"

"It looks like a, um. Well. Not to be, er, Freudian or anything but, uh. That's . . . definitely not a cigar."

"Not a what?"

Zero frowned, "That's a . . . penis."

All at once Klein began cackling, over and over again, like a broken fax machine.

"A _penis_," he managed to choke out between peals of laughter, "There's . . . a _penis_ in the way of the satellite."

"Don't be juvenile," Mobius scowled at Klein, "If male genetalia is blocking our view of post-disaster world events we're actually in quite a bind."

"Oh shut up you posturing buffoon," Klein snapped, and laughed some more, "It's Dala's . . . formographical crafts project is what it is . . . oh, and now it's blocking our view of the planet. A gigantic . . . _penis_."

Klein collapsed into laughing until he was unable to breathe, began coughing, choked on his own bitter humour and sat gasping and clutching at his gut.

"Now . . . that's . . . scientific . . . proof of God . . ." he wheezed.

"My Adonis," she whispered, gazing at the outline of her statue's faithful representation of male anatomy.

"How do you like it where it is?" Klein said through his teeth, "Eternally rotating in space like an . . . an oversized interstellar swimsuit advertisement?"

"I'm perfectly satisfied," she said with an uncharacteristic smile, "It will never be touched by unworthy human hands. It will never be sullied, turned into a figure for plebeian amusement as I reluctantly suggested early yesterday. It has found a perfection in orbit. It is a new moon for the eclipse of man."

"How poetic," Klein growled as he rose from his chair to grab himself a cup of coffee.

"He'll be visible via telescope on cloudless nights," Mobius said, "I wonder how his presence will influence the rebuilding of society. It may be time to draft up a report on it."

"Where's the regular mentat powder?" Klein complained.

"All we have is sugarless. Didn't you . . . you were right there!" Zero gestured at the empty chair.

"No, not entirely. I'm here now, though. The cumulative poison of disappointments and betrayals is bitter to taste, bitterer to swallow, and bitterer-er to digest. This coffee is _cold,_" Klein winced, "But I'm quite over it. You've all showed me just how little you care for my capacity for managerial oversight. I suppose I'll be delegated to the position of assistant janitor for trying to clean up and organize the messes you all leave behind. Except for Mobius, of course, but I'm quite past being jealous of him for . . . what? Nothing! Toy robots? Don't make me laugh. I keep you all from falling into utter disarray daily. You come to _me_ when you need to know if your ideas are laughable or not. And do my job: I laugh at them! Often even when they're fine ideas, for even the most polished-looking of stones can use some buffing and the most correct theorems can be arranged in a more pleasing manner to the eye. And how do we accomplish this? Through derision. Nothing that can't survive my objectively superior stance on what is and is not laughable would ever amount to anything but a waste of resources. Show me one thing in this facility that I haven't laughed at and tell me, prove to me, that it advanced science."

"Klein, you laughed at the idea of the Veteran Employee's Memorial Emergency care unit which led to the development of the current line of Auto-Docs," 8 said with a raised eyebrow.

"Ha! And where are our employees now? They've fled into the open arms a rival corporation! That's what you get for prescribing charity where short-wavelength mind control or an painlessly simple laser-guided lobotomy will suffice. Besides, the Auto-Doc program would have become a reality eventually. We were already looking for newer, more efficient ways to unpack the human parcel."

"You laughed at your _own project_ once, Klein," Zero scoffed, "When they brought you the Z9, you laughed at it. Said it was impossible to reverse-engineer. A fool's errand."

"And I was right, wasn't I? It was impossible for _me_ to do it. Laughable notion, corrected via the proper application of contracted labour. I'm quite over it. Point is that no matter how many projects of yours you stole back from me or how many lone projects of merit of mine are lost forever: you need me. You need me more than you need the Sun. Think about it. The Earth's _sun._ Very important _thing_ to need."

"I never said anything to the contrary," Mobius said with eyebrows raised, "There's a reason you have tenure here, Klein."

"Oh! Really? Well then, Mobius, tell me why you're constantly trying to undermine my position with your incessant one-upmanship and, oh I don't know, machines designed with the specific aim in mind to replace me?"

"You're better for it," Mobius said, "Like you said: buffing polished rocks, beautifying equations. That works for you too. You wouldn't be so good at making everyone doubt themselves into accidental catastrophes of true genius if I weren't around to make you feel so insecure and inferior about your legitimacy as a man of science."

"Well . . . I . . . suppose that's," Klein paused to tap his lip, "Rather auspicious of you."

"I am, at heart, a philanthropist," Mobius shrugged, taking a sip.

"Well then, now that we're square on, er, things, what's our plan for post-apocalyptica? Monitoring Vault-Tec? Social engineering plans? Exponential cell mutational growths? Weaponizing cancer cure research?"

"Establishing a proper telecommunications network from the ground up?" 8 suggested.

"NEW FORAYS into the realm of genetic splicing exploits NEVER BEFORE ALLOWED under the watchful eye of an ESTABLISHED GOVERNMENT," Borous offered.

"Formological extrapolation of articulated movement," Dala said.

"Robots! We'll need lots of robots! Low labor pool out there now," Zero.

"I'm still examening what modifications Robert House made to Beedle's body in an attempt to lengthen the human lifespan," Mobius.

"New and interesting bacteria!"

"Unregulated biological recombination gases!"

"Improving the human spleen!"

"Universal digestion!"

"State-of-the-art synthetic blood transfusion!"

"Plants that walk, talk, and sing!"

"Evolutionary re-branching!"

"Dream pistols! Pistols that induce waking dreams!"

Their shouts of triumph at the prospect of a new world, already having forsaken the old, echoed throughout the empty hallways of the Dome. In every corner of the crater machines whirred back to life. Outside, the sand whirled into eddies, spun up into little dust-devils and took off into the muggy sky. Standing on the front porch of the Dome, a broom taped to his hand, stood a lone figure stabbing at dust slithering in tendrils across the white concrete walkway. Drool spilled from his mouth. The ruins of his face scarred and broken by smashing through a windshield stung him as stray gusts of wind rubbed sand into the scar tissue. He couldn't keep his eyes off of the sandstorm encircling the crater like the glass of an enormous snow globe just beyond the boundary of the influence of weather control. It was hazy yet hypnotic. Earth would sleep for years to come. That dust was a great hand cupping them inside of their own little globe, keeping the Dome blind, from disturbing the long slumber of the Earth.

"Grrrrrrrrunnnnnnnh grrrrrrrrunnnh," the figure said, "Grunh tpfffffrthhhh."


End file.
